Some colleagues who are working on a contract overseas shared some very interesting observations on how their client conducts developer interviews using pairing. This is a really creative and innovative approach that I think can yield better candidates than the traditional whiteboarding interview:
They follow an "explicit pairing" development style where one of their interviewers actually designs a solution with the candidate (collaborates instead of interviews) and the second interviewer collaborates with the candidate to code up the design they came up with. The coding is actual coding which they do on laptops and they switch between writing test cases and the actual solution half way through the exercise -- i.e. one picks up the others code and tries to finish the exercise.
There are few things we can learn from their style (it flushes out design and development ability more explicitly than whiteboarding and also surfaces ability to collaborate when things get down and dirty and nothing clears the mind better than having to dig through someone elses code).
This approach blows my mind – it takes the staid, boring and dry interview process and makes it (for the right candidates) a fun and engaging activity that not only helps better surface skills and potential, but also offers insights into how an agile team works.
How do you conduct interviews? What do you like or dislike about the process? Would this type of real-time pairing and problem solving help your team find better candidates?
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