Interviewing in IT – Finding Solid Candidates

One challenge within all IT organizations is finding and interviewing candidates to ensure that those hired into an organization will not only bring necessary skills, but also allow the organization to grow and evolve. Interviewing methods vary from company to company based on a variety of factors including culture, past experiences and human resource department influences. I hope to explore some factors I believe lead to successfully interviewing of candidates.

In my mind, there are four primary purposes of interviews:

1. Determine if the candidate has the proper technical skills to be successful. This includes a combination of technical knowledge and past experiences.
2. Determine if the candidates' personality is compatible with both existing team members as well as the company culture.
3. Determine if the candidate has the necessary willingness to learn new skills and learn from their team to evolve and grow in the position.
4. (Sometimes) Determine if the candidate has specific domain knowledge or industry connections that can only be obtained by hiring from outside the organization.

Here are the key items I keep in mind when interviewing, as well as encourage others to think about when interviewing candidates for my team and other teams I work with.

How Long?
Don't focus on how long the individual will be at the company; assigning a time frame will defer focus from the more critical aspects of the candidates' place within the organization. Focus instead on what the individuals career goals are. Can those be met at this company? What types of technology do they want to work on and learn? If these are technologies your company uses and will be using, the chances of a long term candidate increase greatly.

Technology is not the only factor, focus on other aspects of the individuals career goals. Are they expecting promotions into management or technical lead positions? These types of advancement opportunities will determine how long the candidate will be at the company.

2-way Street
I have been to many interviews that the individual conducting the interview forgot that interviews are 2-way streets. While it is important for a company to determine if an individual will perform well within the company structure and culture, it is equally important that the individual get a realistic feel for the company and see the company in a good light. You don't want to risk loosing a strong candidate because the focus was too much on asking the individual questions, and not enough on allowing them to see the possibilities your company has to offer.

Brain teasers are fine, but.....
Many organizations today use brain-teaser type questions to understand how a candidate solves problems and their methods for thinking and responding to stressful situations. These tests have a valid place within interviews, but need to be used properly to ensure you are getting valid results from the tests. It is important to only ask brain teasers that the individual will have the domain knowledge to approach answering. I have been in many Network Architect interviews and asked questions about algorithms around managing large datasets. This was not a good use of time for me or the interviewer. It is important to ensure that even if the candidate can not answer the brain-teasers, they have enough base knowledge to share their through process for solving the puzzle.

Personality Tests
Personality Tests tend to fade in and out of popularity as an interviewing tool. Many companies argue that they provide a glimpse into the candidates tendencies and habits and can allow the human resources department to determine their compatibility with existing personality types at the company. The problem is that many of these tests are quite easy to “study” for and this can heavily skew the results. My feeling is that taking the candidate to lunch or coffee with a small group of team members will show much more then a standard test ever will. The key with an interview is to make sure both parties are comfortable enough that they communicate as they would in any standard work situation.

By conducting the interview in places other then your standard conference room, you have a better chance of understanding what the individuals work habits are and how they converse with others. It is easy to watch how a candidate talks with folks at the office; it is an entirely different view to see how they interact with the wait staff at a restaurant and a very useful data point on their personality.

Work Location
“Remote” working is all the rage these days, especially in IT. You know my thoughts on it from previous postings, I think that it has it's place, but not all positions can function effectively while being isolated at home. Deciding if a position is going to be “remote” should be done before interviewing potential candidates, this decision should be based on the type of work this position will be doing, as well as that of the team and how well that work can be done in a distributed fashion.

Not only does work location include being “remote” or not, it also includes possible relocation of the candidate. It is important to set expectations up front on the companies' policies for relocation. If there is no relocation budget and the candidate is three-states away, it is probably not worth pursuing.

Finally, it is important to understand an individuals' constraints around relocation, both time frames and potential locations. If a candidate does not like cold, yet your company is based in northern Alaska, there is probably little need to continue the interview process.

Technical Questions
I do not suggest jumping immediately into complex technical questions, no matter what job you are interviewing a candidate for. I suggest rather working up to the point they appear to be at from their resume. This means checking for the base knowledge and experience, this is a good method to see how the candidate responds. Do they seem passionate about the work? Do they speak more about knowledge or experiences? Do they speak about where they go to stay current on the industry?

One of my favorite interview tactics is to ask a technical question about a problem we recently encountered. This is a great opportunity to see not only the candidates thought process, but also what level of detail they go into for solving the problem and what tools they would use to approach the problem. Continuing to ask questions about the problem will also show a lot about how they respond under pressure and how they communicate to other team members in the face of a stressful situation.

Technical questions also provide a good basis for seeing what knowledge the candidate has about the industry as a whole. Do they understand the benefits of one vendor or another? Or do they focus on using what they know and are comfortable with?

Domain/Vertical Knowledge
Most information technology professionals are specialized, that is, they work in a specific industry; these can include Financial Services, Oil & Gas, High Performance Computing, etc. Each of these domains has specific tools and applications, as well as industry accepted methods of accomplishing tasks.

When interviewing it is important to decide up front if you are looking for a candidate that is experienced in your specific domain, or if you are looking for a strong IT candidate that could bring an outside perspective to your organization. This will drive what questions you ask, as well as where you go to look for potential candidates to fill the position.


Interviewing is an art, it takes time to develop a process that works for you and your organization. Starting with hard technical questions will not help you determine if a candidate is qualified, there is much more to how a candidate will succeed or fail in your organization. You must treat all interviews as 2-way streets; this allows both parties to get an accurate picture all all aspects of the position including location, expectations, team dynamics and technical knowledge as well as desire to learn and evolve.

In my mind, technical skills are secondary for today's information technology positions. More important then all the technical knowledge in the world is how well the candidate communicates with team members, responds under pressure, understands trade offs and benefits analysis and ultimately the candidates desire to learn and grow and IT evolves. No matter how technical someone is, if they can not get along with them team they will be a detriment to the organization.