Every candidate should go through three interviews that help us find the right person for the job.
Before they are interviewed, the candidate should show some relevant work that will help give us an initial screen and something to talk about in the first coffee interview. They should also get a blurb about Clef, the position, and our values so that they can self-screen if our culture doesn’t match the kind of company they want to work for. Values in particular should be emphasized here so that they understand how important they are to the Clef team and make sure they align.
A resume or online profile can tell us a lot about what a candidate has done, but the first thing we need to find out is what they want to do next, and whether that matches what we’re looking for at Clef. This interview can happen over the phone, Skype, in the office, or out at a coffee shop.
The idea is to spend 30 minutes getting to know the candidate and letting them ask questions about Clef and the position. This has screened about 80% of candidates so far, which seems about right. It should be pretty transparent if the candidate’s experience or interests are misaligned for the job.
This interview should also focus on selling Clef and recruiting promising candidates, as this is their first real contact with Clef and their desire to work here will be formed in this meeting.
This interview can take place over video chat, though we should work to have it in person when possible.
The technical interview is a chance to dive into the candidate’s ability at the job they’re interviewing for. The lead on this hire should prepare two exercises which will each take 45 minutes, one which goes into high level thinking for the position and the other which focuses on more low level implementation.
The last 30 minutes should be used for questions and answers from both sides. This interview should filter out 50-70% of candidates (of the remaining 20%), and by the end of it, the lead interviewer should have an opinion on whether or not the candidate is the right person for the job.
This interview can take place over video chat, though we should work to have it in person when possible.
Finally, the candidate should come in for a whole day of talking to and working with the team. In the morning they'll drill into a much more challenging problem than they had to deal with in their technical interview. We want to get a sense for how candidates handle something out of their comfort zone, how they ask for help, etc. It’s also important that candidates feel like they’ve earned their offer by the time they get it, so this part of the process should be hard!
After the morning exercises, candidates go out to lunch with the team before coming back to the office for one on ones with everyone. As we get a little bigger, this might need to be one on twos to fit conversations into a reasonable amount of time.
This interview should always take place in the office, with all travel expenses covered by Clef.