My interview usually focus on the candidates work. Talk about your folio, talk about your job, talk about your professional interests. Ask us clever questions (I believe that a candidate’s clever questions tell me more about themselves than their clever answers do). What’s your hobby project, what coding or tech art related would you do if you had a lot of time on your hands? How’d you go about it and what tech would you choose? Personally I don’t really believe in nitpicky coding questions. Although there’s a standardized test for more senior candidates which will be taken into account as well.

Sometimes you really need raw expertise and skill, and I think those are the dangerous hiring situations. You may feel tempted to make exceptions just so you can have a guy who helps you with something for a deliverable. That I think that can be a mistake – you really have to weight short term vs. long term benefits here, or you hire such a person on a contractual basis, if you’re not sure if they’ll fit.

But in the end,hiring is like planning a project – it’s essentially you trying, with some clever methods, to predict the future. In my career I always fared well with people who I hired because they could talk about themselves, their work, who showed enthusiasm and curiosity. People who would go home and then work or research their own things because they love what they do. Those are the guys who stay in the team, who get promoted, and who’ll actively try to improve themselves. And in that case, does it really matter that much how good they are at the beginning?