How do you craft an interview process that accurately assesses a candidate's skill level while ensuring you're not eliminating qualified candidates? Take this 5 minute quiz and get actionable recommendations to improve your technical interview.

What was the worst interview you've ever had? What made it bad?

I'll start! The worst interview I've had was for my second job in tech, with a company a recruiter hooked me up with. I didn't realize it was affiliated with the opposite political party. The technical half of the interview went great, but then the second half were questions like "who is your favorite economist?" and "who is your favorite president?" for QA automation role. It was incredibly uncomfortable. Since then, I've gotten a lot bolder about bowing out of interviews that don't seem like a good fit, like after one company's next step was a "cognitive assessment" (read: SAT). Or, in one case, 15 minutes into an interview when the interviewer asked me to code a binary search without being allowed to google anything.

@jrobins so you're canceling interviews if the cognitive assessment is in the process? I feel frustated by these, but up until now played by their rules. What's your reasoning to bow out of these?

@postmodernwork Oh yeah definitely for myself, I wouldn't want to work for a company that gives a cognitive assessment during the interview for a software engineering position. Huge red culture flag for me. I don't think they are predictive of performance on the job, though, for the same reason the SAT is more predictive of how much money you spend to prepare for the SAT, as opposed to how well you can do in college. There's a lot of studies out there that show these types of cognitive assessments are heavily biased with regard to socio-economic status, native language, disability, etc...

@jrobins The worst interviews were the ones they want me to whiteboard a classic cs algorithm. I don't have a traditional background and my day job as an engineer does not overlap with knowing binary search/ etc. Interviewing requires extensive practice on "interview style coding". The whole thing is just broken.

@jrobins Hi Jess, I would love to have a conversation with you.

Hey folks 👋 I made Not The Pipeline because there is a common misconception that the lack diversity in tech is due to a "pipeline problem." In other words, many people believe that certain groups are underrepresented in tech because there just aren't that many qualified candidates. The truth is, it's not the pipeline. If your company is struggling to hire underrepresented people in tech, it's likely due to a leak somewhere in your hiring funnel. There are a number of tools out there that address this problem for various parts of the funnel – diversity-specific job boards for sourcing (shoutout to Diversify Tech, which is WAY more than a job board), apps that use AI to analyze for bias in job postings, etc... NTP aims specifically to address bias that manifests as part of the coding challenge portion of the interview. If you believe that diversity and inclusion is not a priority, or that you will be "lowering the bar" by modifying your practices to attract underrepresented candidates, NTP is not for you. NTP is for those who want a genuine analysis of their software engineering interview process, based on hundreds of sources, with actionable recommendations for improvement in order to make the process more equitable, inclusive, and welcoming to ALL candidates, but especially underrepresented ones. At any rate, check out it; I would love to hear what you think! And please post your interview horror stories below 😊 Because, underrepresented or not, I'm sure we've all had experiences with interviews that did not reflect our true potential. Also, a huge shoutout to @robert_broersma whose BigHeads I used in copious amounts.

What was the best interview you've ever had? What made it great?

For me, the best technical interview I've had was when I got to present some code I was working on and talk about an interesting part of it. I don't think that kind of interview would work for everybody since not everybody has the time or inclination to code outside of work, but I really enjoyed it! I think that's why it's important to give candidates a choice.

NOT THE PIPELINE

Take a 5 minute quiz and fix your tech interview

Take a 5 minute quiz and fix your tech interview

NOT THE PIPELINE

Take a 5 minute quiz and fix your tech interview

Take a 5 minute quiz and fix your tech interview

Do you use NOT THE PIPELINE?

Do you use NOT THE PIPELINE?