Have you seen Nick Korbel's series about hiring techies? See On Hiring Techies.
There are several posts:
- Evaluate Potential, Not Accomplishments. He's talking about evaluating qualities, preferences, and non-technical skills.
- Coding Challenge: A pre-interview audition. The cool thing is that they then discuss the audition in the interview.
- The Team Interview. I dislike panel interviews. It sounds as if Nick has some positive experience with it. I prefer one-on-one interviews with an interview matrix to organize the interviewing. One thing I do like is that Nick says the entire team must agree with the hire. (Yes—Fist pump!)
- Hire For Cultural Fit. Nick says, “I can teach someone a new technology. I cannot teach someone how to fit into our culture.” Believe it.
If you want to see some of my posts, check out:
Skills for 2013: It’s Not About Tools or Technology
Three Tips to Streamline Your Interviews and Auditions, Part 4. Also, check out my audition tag.
Assign Roles for Group/Panel Interviews and Plan for an Interview with an Interview Matrix
My own cultural fit posts:
- Series on Cultural Fit Posted
- How to Hire for Cultural Fit Without Becoming Insular or Mediocre
- Hiring for Cultural Fit: It's Time to Add Women, pt 1
You can always get your own copy of Hiring Geeks That Fit. It explains everything all in one place.
My team has been using panel interviews for years and we’ve had great results. In fact many of our hires report that the panel interview was a big part of why they joined us, and that they liked it much better than other interviews they had done, because it gave them a chance to get to know us and see what it would be like to work with us. It’s definitely a bigger time commitment for the interview team but we think it’s well worth it.
Charlie, wow, that’s great. Maybe you can explain how you organize the panel? I suspect it’s not a bunch of people sitting at a table across from the candidate, firing questions. It sounds as if you have thought about creating more of a team-like atmosphere.
If you don’t want to comment, email me the specifics, and I can write a blog post about how to make panel interviews work for you.