Building Great Software Engineering Teams: Recruiting, Hiring, and Managing Your Team from Startup to Success

CHAPTER 8

Making Interviews Fun for Your Team

Interviews should be fun. Think about it… You get to meet people, learn new things, and hear about interesting experiences. Why wouldn’t it be an enjoyable experience?

Unfortunately, the interview process in many companies is mundane, mechanical, and, frankly, joyless. Conducting interviews is considered just another obligation that contributes to an engineer’s “overhead”—time spent doing things less fun than building a product.

You’ll get the best results if your team truly enjoys conducting interviews. They’ll be more enthusiastic, more engaged, and more insightful. Candidates will notice the attitudes of your interviewers as well, and they will respond positively to a team that appears to love ...