
Ask HN: What was your best interview experience? - raman162
I am currently at an early stage startup, and we&#x27;re having trouble acquiring talent after many final-stage interviews. One of our recent candidates gave us great feedback saying that they did not feel as engaged with our team during the interview process when compared with other companies.<p>What are that great experiences that you had when interviewing with companies?
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drugme
The best few (spanning multiple decades) have been those that didn't feel like
modern "interviews" at all.

That is, no: grilling, brain-teasers, "culture fit" tests; no pre-loaded,
condescending "lemme see how dumb/smart this guy is -- because _I_ can tell"
vibe -- or other head games of any sort. And for that matter, no "script".

But rather, simply: "Let's look at / talk about your work. How can you help us
with our work? BTW, I'm liking the way this conversation is going -- when
might you be available?"

To keep things simple: roles/projects opening with discussions following the
above model are pretty much the only ones I am interested in pursuing, these
days.

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0x14c1de72
What you described is most of my interview experiences and what I would
actually call a modern interview.

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djdjj
I am currently going through interviews, here’s my experience.

Give a general overview of your company first and why you need to hire before
asking questions.

Don’t ask for a generalist because that just seems like you don’t know what
you want to hire.

Be prepared for the meeting. You can tell a lot about an employer on what they
say. Are these questions well thought out? Or is he/she just winging it?

Don’t assume candidates don’t have options and would do anything to work with
you. You aren’t Elon Musk.

Be punctual.

And most importantly, be polite even if you don’t think that candidate is
right for you. I always warn others if I had a bad experience at a company.

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CloudNetworking
Those that felt like natural conversations, just flowing... These are usually
the ones ran by very senior (and often non-technical) employees.

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pryelluw
That's how I conduct interviews these days. It's just conversation based
around tech. Problem is that it is not scalable. Not everyone has the skills
to do such thing. Thats why my company still resorts to hacker rank screeners
...

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taf2
Google in 2007! Awesome and fun questions, great people.

