

Ask HN: Interviewing candidates for an accelerator. What should I ask them? - AndriusSutas

I will be interviewing candidates for an accelerator programme (which I am currently part of myself). I see this as a perfect opportunity to learn recruitment for my own startup.<p>Interviews are at most 1h and usually shorter. We  want to select only the <i>best</i> technical people (i.e. no business guys).<p>From your experience hiring, what are the best questions I should ask people in order to gauge their technical aptitude and general awesomeness? Is there anything non-obvious I should pay attention to?
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phantom_oracle
> We want to select only the best technical people (i.e. no business guys).

Problem 1: Bias

Problem 2: "Guys" (no feminism here) should actually be "teams" (even if
they're all 23, white, male)

> what are the best questions I should ask people in order to gauge their
> technical aptitude and general awesomeness?

Doing this won't get you anywhere. You are a business accelerator, not Amazon
hiring a genius who writes assembly that can squeeze out an extra 2% on their
servers.

You should be evaluating teams (most important), their execution (also
important) and their idea (least important but very valid).

Personally, I don't think you should be doing the interviews on your own, or
if everyone thinks like you, should probably get experienced entrepreneurs to
do it instead. __

__Please note that I am not insulting you or any of your abilities. It just
seems that you have an ingrained technical bias and you may recruit highly-
talented tech people but most of their ideas are shit and your accelerator
will bomb-out soon.

~~~
AndriusSutas
Completely agree with your observations re. 1st and 2nd problems!

I should have provided a little bit more context: the accelerator is pre-seed
and it takes _individuals_ , as opposed to teams, straight from university and
mostly even pre-idea. The accelerator itself facilitates team building, idea
generation and then provides courses on customer dev / etc. as company
progresses.

The accelerator invests in highly technical people and ideas, not companies or
teams. The track record so far indicates that the thesis of "awesome people
will build awesome things given the right environment" is working.

~~~
phantom_oracle
Valid thesis and something that is being proven as you go.

Basically squashes my suggestion at the same time :P

Good luck!

