Practical Tips for Interviewing Technical Talent

Somewhere between the whiteboard and the Zoom call, interviewing technical talent became its own kind of theatre. Everyone’s acting, the candidate trying to look “collaborative” while solving a binary tree recursion problem, and the interviewer pretending that this exercise has anything to do with the job.

But here’s the problem: even when we know the script is flawed, we keep following it. Not because it works, but because rewriting it is hard. Especially when your team is scaling, your devs are stretched thin, and your interview panel was put together five minutes before kickoff.

So if you’re serious about making better technical hires, not just faster ones, it’s time to rethink what the interview is actually for. Not a performance. Not a gate. A conversation. A calibration. A filter, sure, but ideally one that doesn’t leak talent.

Let’s start at the surface and drill our way down to where the real pain lives.

You’re Asking the Wrong Questions (and Everyone Knows It)

Let’s be honest: asking someone “what happens when you type a URL into a browser” is like asking a Formula 1 driver to explain combustion. They’ll do it. They might even smile. But it tells you nothing about how they actually drive under pressure.

The real issue here? We confuse memorization with capability. And candidates know it, they’ve Googled “top 50 tech interview questions” and prepped for all of them. You’re not catching them off guard. You’re catching them in a performance.

The fix? Contextual questions rooted in reality. Ask what broke in their last deployment and how they diagnosed it. Ask what they disagreed with on their team and how they handled it. Ask how they would redesign your onboarding flow. These aren’t hypotheticals, they’re mirrors.

Take-Home Tests Aren’t Neutral (They’re Biased by Design)

On paper, take-home projects sound fair. No live pressure. No awkward silence. No one watching them type. But what they really measure is who has spare time, a quiet space, and no second job. That’s not equity. That’s filtering for privilege.

Worse, most companies don’t actually know how to evaluate take-homes consistently. One reviewer says, “Clean code.” Another says, “No tests.” A third goes full Reddit-thread and rewrites the solution themselves.

You want technical insight? Fine. But keep it small, tight, and relevant. 90 minutes max. Not 9 hours. And always pay candidates for their time. If they’re building real value, treat them like professionals, not unpaid consultants.

Interviewer Bias Isn’t Just a Training Problem

Yes, you’ve done unconscious bias training. No, it didn’t fix your interviews.

Here’s why: structure matters more than sentiment. You can’t just “try to be objective.” You need rubrics. Scoring guides. Calibration meetings. You need to know what good looks like before you sit down with the candidate, not after they charm you.

Because without structure, you’re just hiring people who remind you of you. And that’s how we end up with teams full of technically competent clones who all think the same way.

Want to build a better process? Make sure two interviewers can independently watch the same interview and come to the same conclusion. If not, you don’t have a process. You have a vibe.

Culture Fit is Code for “I Don’t Like Them”

Ah yes, the culture fit fallback. The polite way to say “something felt off, but I can’t put my finger on it.”

Here’s the problem: if you can’t explain what “fit” means, it’s not culture, it’s comfort. And comfort is often code for shared backgrounds, shared accents, shared jokes. In tech interviews, this shows up when candidates get dinged for being “too quiet,” “too intense,” or “not collaborative enough”, which usually just means “not like us.”

Instead of culture fit, hire for culture add. Ask: what perspectives are missing on our team? What types of thinkers do we not have? What friction could be useful?

And if your process relies on “gut feel,” ask whose gut you’re trusting, and why.

You’re Testing Algorithms, but Hiring Engineers

Let’s talk about Leetcode.

Solving recursive Fibonacci sequences under timed pressure doesn’t tell you if someone can debug flaky test suites, write maintainable code, or navigate a messy legacy system. Unless you’re building compiler tools or doing algo-heavy work, these tests are a poor proxy for the job.

The real signal comes from how people approach complexity. Do they break down the problem? Do they ask clarifying questions? Do they prioritize readability over cleverness? That’s what matters.

Want to go deeper? Have them walk through real code. Give them a broken build and ask how they’d fix it. Give them a product spec and ask what edge cases they’d plan for. No trick questions. Just work that mirrors reality.

Candidate Experience Still Sucks (And It’s Still Costing You Talent)

The bar is low, and somehow we’re still tripping over it. Ghosted candidates. No feedback. Inconsistent timelines. Vague expectations. Then we wonder why top engineers drop out halfway or bad-mouth the process on Twitter.

Here’s the truth: every step of your hiring process is a brand impression. If the experience feels sloppy, so does your company. If it feels disrespectful, they’ll assume that’s how you treat employees, too.

Fix it by being predictable. Set clear timelines. Give real feedback. Tell them what to expect. If you’re not sure who’s responsible for next steps, your process isn’t ready to interview.

The Interviewing Gap No One Talks About

Here’s what really separates the great interviewers from the rest: they’ve done the job. Not just the interviewing job, the actual job.

If your interview panel is full of people who haven’t written production code in years, who don’t understand the difference between SRE and backend, or who treat interviewing as a distraction from “real work,” you’re in trouble.

Train your interviewers. Not just on bias, but on what you’re actually hiring for. Give them examples of great vs. average answers. Debrief after every round. And rotate your panels so you don’t get groupthink.

Because if your interviewers aren’t learning, your hiring isn’t improving.

What if the Whole Model Needs a Rethink?

There’s a growing school of thought that interviews, at least the way we do them, are fundamentally broken. Not just flawed. Broken.

People are exploring alternatives: trial projects, team-based auditions, portfolio reviews, job simulations, peer interviews, even asynchronous video responses. None are perfect, but all start from the same place, admitting that the old system doesn’t work for everyone.

The question isn’t whether your interview process has gaps. It does. The question is whether you’re willing to do the hard work of fixing them, not just for optics, but for outcomes.

Final Thought: Hiring Isn’t a Checklist. It’s a Craft.

Interviewing technical talent isn’t just about assessing skills. It’s about translating potential into context. It’s about understanding how someone builds, thinks, and collaborates when the pressure’s on.

And the interview, that weird, imperfect dance, is still one of the few tools we’ve got to figure that out.

But it only works if we’re honest about what it measures. And if we’re willing to stop pretending that just because we’ve always done it this way, it’s the best we can do.

So don’t just improve your questions. Improve the way you question. Because the real challenge isn’t finding great talent, it’s recognizing it when it walks through the door.