Interviewing remote engineers is a craft. Learn what makes for an effective process for interviewing engineers remotely.
Hiring software engineers has become challenging. The number of companies that need world-class talent is continually growing, and the number of unemployed engineers is low. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts a fast job growth rate of 22%, including developers, testers, and analysts, for the period from 2019 until 2029.
But, aside from finding tech talent, there's another issue with hiring EXCEPTIONAL engineers. One of the main goals of every founder is to put together a great engineering team that will move the company forward.
As a tech company founder, I've personally interviewed engineers from all around the globe. Over the years, I've made good decisions and bad ones. From what I've learned from my experience of interviewing software engineers remotely, I want to share some software engineer interview tips:
Standardize Your Interview Process
Before we dive into what to do (and what not to do) when interviewing developers remotely, it's important to note that you need a thorough, standard interviewing process. A standardized interviewing process will help you arrive at more meaningful conclusions.
Sometimes tech companies struggle with this part. The interviewing process often depends on how busy the team is, who is available, and what the company focuses on at that moment.
As challenging as it can get, by having set up a thorough interview process, you'll have a chance to test a candidate's technical skills, soft skills, as well as cultural fit. In other words, you'll get the bigger picture.
If you're going to have three sessions, then keep that same process for all candidates.
By taking this approach, you can make sure that the candidate gets several opportunities to display their skills.
At Adeva, we specialize in finding top engineers worldwide, by having three different steps, each of them used to evaluate something specific.
- Pre-qualification call: we schedule a Zoom call to understand more about each engineer. For us, it's really important not only to evaluate a person's communication skills but to also identify what type of environment an engineer will thrive in the most.
- Skills evaluation: the next step in our process is to make sure the engineer is a top-notch candidate in terms of skills. In this step, we ask remote developer interview questions about completing a coding challenge with a certain technology. When reviewing the assignment, we pay attention to the architecture, coding style, unit tests, etc.
- Company culture check: The third step is to identify in what company culture the developer thrives. It's never a good idea to put a person with a startup interview process mindset in an enterprise culture when things are slower. Or the other way around.
Check for Soft Skills and Cultural Fit
In an interview with an engineer, it's not only the technical skills that truly matter. Soft skills are also important. Every technical hire must be equally skillful in writing code and communicating with colleagues.
Soft skills in a software engineering interview process will become even more critical in the future of work. Most growing companies need a technical talent who can not only “get it done”, but also communicate effectively with colleagues or stakeholders.
During the software engineering interviews, try to analyze whether the candidate possesses the following soft skills:
- Problem-solving skills and critical thinking
- Communication skills
- People and interpersonal skills
- Self-awareness
- Self-learning
- Accountability
- Time management
Address Cultural Fit
Cultural fit is another big topic in the tech realm. What every company needs is people who will expand and enhance its values.
And since software engineers, on average, stay 1.5 years in small companies and 2.3 years in large companies, you have to be sure that the potential new employee is determined to help you further the mission of the company.
If you're a remote company, you have to look for specific traits in candidates. What is their experience working remotely? Do they believe in the remote-work model? These people have to have exceptional communication skills, be able to work under minimal supervision, and have a strong work ethic. A software engineer interview with CTO can be a nice way to see their cultural fit to a certain extent.
Give Some Weight to a College Diploma
Questions to ask engineers are valuable, but giving some weight to a college diploma makes sense. But completely disqualifying a candidate due to the lack of one is irrational. Companies that do this risk losing a talent pool of qualified candidates.
In some cases, even a person who has graduated from an Ivy League college and worked at Google might not be a cultural fit for your company.
On the other hand, you can have a candidate who doesn't look good on paper but possesses exceptional skills. If you give them a chance to attend an interview, maybe they will surprise you with their technical and communication skills. Maybe what candidates need is to work at the right company where they will get the right opportunity, motivation, and career growth. Resumes are only one data point, but you need several in order to get the real picture.
Ask Technical Questions That Are Related to the Job
Instead of checking whether a candidate can answer a question, the more important thing is to see how a candidate will answer a question. If you use engineering interview questions to ask candidates that are very difficult, there's a chance that the larger part of your candidates may not solve it at all.
If you want to know how to hire engineers quickly, analyzing how a candidate answers a question can tell you how experienced they are in the field. If a candidate answers the question quickly without overthinking it, then that candidate is probably more skilled than those who take a long time to give you an answer. I respect people who show up with a piece of paper and a pen for a technical interview. To me, that shows they are ready to smash the interview before it has ever started.
To improve communication during the software engineer interview process, consider adding a third person to the interview that knows how to interview engineers. Instead of doing one-on-one software developer interviews, add another colleague to the mix, as that can open up the discussion.
If you need help asking the right questions, take a look at our compilation of interview questions for software engineers.
Decide What Skills Matter for the Role and Then Vet for Those Skills
There are thousands of languages and frameworks. Successful software developers possess a set of technical skills in specific areas. If someone has over 30 languages listed on their CV, don't hesitate to reject their application - unless they have over 15 years of experience.
So, my tip here would be to decide what skills matter for the role you're hiring for and vet for those skills.
Try answering the following questions:
- Which types of tech roles am I looking for? Is it front-end, back-end, full-stack, data scientist, technical product manager, or site reliability engineer tech positions?
- Which technologies does my tech team use, and is the candidate acquainted with those technologies?
- Am I looking for junior-level engineers or senior engineers?
- What problems will they be solving at the company?
Do Not Make the Take-Home Assignment Mandatory
There are great arguments for giving candidates coding assignments and strong ones against it. On the one hand, these assignments are an excellent way to see if the candidate can solve problems and if their code is well-structured.
On the other hand, many of the developers you'll be interviewing in 2023 will already have full-time jobs. Chances are, they will be struggling to maintain a balance between their full-time jobs and completing the assignment. The best engineers will never use their free time to complete a take-home project.
If you don't want to lose a large pool of tech talent, my advice here would be to not make the software engineer take-home assignment mandatory. Also, make it a small and easy project that can be finished in 2-3 hours. If it's a well-time-boxed assignment, you'll have more candidates completing the project.
Find Out About Their Biggest Challenge
The biggest challenge in one's career may be different, depending on whether someone is a junior or a senior software engineer.
Asking this question when you want to interview engineers will help you understand the candidate's contribution to past projects and how they managed to deal with pressure in a given situation. What's more, you'll get a chance to analyze their thinking capabilities, how they approach challenging issues, and how they overcome such situations.
And get this: you can also see how a candidate deals with clients. Even though software engineers oftentimes don’t interact with clients in person, you can learn about their emotional stability, how they handle customers, and how they deal with stressful moments.
Try Pair Programming
Many tech companies use whiteboarding when testing their candidates' skills. However, whiteboarding might not be the best indicator of programming skills.
I want to propose a different type of technical test: pair programming. Pair programming is a great way to evaluate a candidate's problem-solving and communication skills.
There are many amazing assessment tools you can find that you can use to conduct pair programming. One such tool is the HackerRank Code Pair tool. You simply choose the challenge you want the candidate to take or load your own.
Just like HackerRank, Code Interview is another amazing tool for assessing your engineers. It’s a cloud-based live programming tool that challenges candidates to solve coding problems in a live environment with an online code editor and compilers. These tools can be especially useful if you're a remote company.
Ask for References
Sometimes, you might think you’ve found the right candidate only to learn that they are not what they presented themselves to be. It's possible for a candidate to inflate their qualifications or to have some other professional skeleton in their closet. You can avoid hiring the wrong person and losing time and money on a bad hire by simply conducting a quick background check, as one of the best ways of how to interview software engineers.
Instead of guessing what kind of a candidate you're dealing with and making a decision based on intuition, references are a great way to learn more about the developer. Find the references the candidate has listed on their application and get in touch to ask if they would recommend the candidate for future employment.
Contacting a previous employer can give you vital information about the candidate. They can uncover the candidate's strengths and limitations or offer you advice on how you can motivate and support that person once they're hired.
Screen for the Ability to Learn
You should be hunting for developers who are willing to take on a challenge and grow their skills. In a field that is always changing, having developers who can adapt to new technologies easily and aren't scared to handle any situation are of high importance.
During your vetting engineering candidates process, make sure you screen the engineering candidates for the ability to learn and adapt. You want them to have the skills to accept challenges and provide a solution. You can screen a candidate's ability to learn by looking at their past experiences, asking the right type of interview questions, and giving them hypothetical situations and problem-solving exercises.
Provide Prompt Feedback
If we are being honest, one of the most used sentences by candidates today is ‘’I never got any feedback from the company after the interview’’.
This is a major issue since by not providing feedback, you are creating bad branding, and since there is so much competition on the market, this is the last thing you need.
Therefore, don’t leave the candidates waiting for a long period with no answer since it creates false hope. If you are not planning to hire them, provide them with feedback fast, at least by email. Also, it’s nice to address the main reasons why they are not hired since this will motivate them to become better, and maybe your paths will cross once again in the future.
Furthermore, this will also protect you from them writing bad online reviews about your company and your founder interviews that can really harm your reputation.
Final Word
Engineer interviews are a craft. And in a highly competitive market, the companies with the most effective interviewing process will be those that will recruit the best engineers.
Your company must strive to build highly functional interviewing processes and a software engineer hiring guide that will detect engineering skills more effectively than anyone else's.
Your end goal should always be to build a great remote engineering team that will be well-rounded, with lots of different skills and points of view.
