Chris Henry’s Post

I've hired and fired thousands of engineers. You know the one thing I've learned? Your interview process is worthless. That "perfect" candidate who nailed every algorithm question in the interview could be your biggest productivity sink. That awkward dev who stumbled through behavioral questions might be your next superstar. Here's what actually works: Stop interviewing. Start contracting. Why? Because pressure reveals performance. Here's are 4 things I look for in that trial period (and spoiler: It's not just code quality): 1. Can they actually plan and prioritize? I ask for simple AM/PM updates in Slack: "Here's what I'm doing today" and "Here's what I did." It shows prioritization skills, communication ability, and whether they can get their thoughts into written form. You'd be shocked how many "senior" devs can't handle this basic ask. 2. How do they handle uncertainty? News flash: Nobody has all the answers. Not me, not your tech lead—nobody. I want to see how people operate at 80% information because that's reality. Some folks completely freeze when they don't have perfect specs. In startup land, we're all making educated guesses. 3. Are they resourceful? If their first instinct is to ping Slack before trying Google or AI tools, that's a red flag. I have a 30-minute rule: When you hit a wall, spend 30 minutes trying to solve it yourself. Not 2 minutes (lazy), not 48 hours (wasteful). Why 30 minutes? You'll learn more struggling with a problem for 29 minutes and solving it yourself vs. having someone give you the answer in 2. But after 30 you're burning time someone's paying for. Try hard, learn from the struggle, but know when to raise your hand. 4. Do they mesh with the team? You can't fix toxic. I don't care if you're the best coder on planet Earth. If you don’t mesh, you're out. Some people will pass every technical test but poison your entire org. That's never going to get better with time. Trust me. The beautiful thing about the contractor approach? You can't fake these traits in a 60-minute interview. But they’ll become crystal clear in week one of actual work. Just pay them for their time, get them in as a contractor, and see how they work.

I've hired 100's of engineers and the team we've assembled at FERMÀT is by far the most talented group I've ever seen. Here's my 5-step framework for hiring world-class engineers: 1) Don't test for everything in 1 interview. Segment your assessments for culture and acumen. Having clarity on what you're interviewing for at each step ensures you hire people who can handle the technical aspects and mesh well with your team. 2.) Go deep in the technical interview. In the technical interviews, the biggest risk is hiring a senior engineer who is too hands-off. Ask any engineering manager. How can you tell if they're going to be too high-level? Push for more detail. Ask follow-up questions like: ➝ "Then what would you do?" ➝ "And then what?" ➝ "Exactly what were you writing to the database?"  ➝ "What was the API interface exactly?" See how they answer—generic and fluffy or giving nitty-gritty details. 3) Dedicate a cultural interview. Have an interview that’s completely divorced from the tech—ideally with a founder. Use this portion to learn about the actual human you’re potentially hiring. In these sessions, Rishabh asks each candidate what motivates them. This helps uncover their "why." Why do they want to join FERMÀT and why now, why at this stage? 4) Ask every engineer this one crucial question. Everyone on the team should be able to answer "Would I enjoy working with this person?" At FERMÀT we have a rigorous 7-step process, so our candidates get to meet with and make an impression on the entire team. And that gives us multiple data points to help assess how they would collaborate and vibe with the team. And if there's anything negative or positive, you want them to describe specifically what they noted. 5) Employ the anti-sell. This is my secret weapon for hiring the best people. I tell them all the reasons they should NOT join FERMÀT. Why? We have a culture of transparency and directness, so by giving them my honest reasons why they may not want to join, I can see how they interact with that information and if they are comfortable with the honest culture we have here. Every hiring process is different, but if you apply this framework you’ll hire engineers who fit the bill. I would love to hear some stories. Who’s willing to share an experience from an interview (candidate or hiring manager)? 

For anyone currently banging their head on a brick wall doing tech test after tech test, I found this is an interesting read from interviewing.io Founder Aline Lerner all about the state of Tech Testing at top companies. With the increased number of people applying for some Engineering roles, they've seen applicants needing to score in 83rd percentile (December 2023) vs 65th percentile back in early 2022, with companies expecting faster and pretty much perfect solutions. Her advice? Aside from using interviewing.io to practice your interviewing skills.. Wait it out as she believes the market will be back to hiring like it was in 2021/2022 within as little as the next 3-6 months. We're definitely seeing the market pick up, so hopefully she's right! Check out the rest of the article in the comments

𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐩 𝐡𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐝𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐬 !⁣ ⁣ All the companies I've worked for had different hiring strategies. Some did 1 interview, others did 3, and some even did 7!⁣ ⁣ Adding more steps to your hiring process won't guarantee that you'll find the perfect candidate. You're just 𝐰𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 and the candidates' time.⁣ ⁣ We're not playing "Mario Kart" here… You pass one stage, congrats, then it's off to the next one, and the next, and the next... until you stop the candidate at the 5th stage. I don't know who came up with the idea that this is a smart hiring strategy, it isn't.⁣ ⁣ When hiring a new developer for your team, the first thing you need to know is if they will fit with the current team members. You can recruit a developer from a top FAANG company, but it won't work if they can't find their place in your team. 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐳𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐟𝐭 𝐬𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐬 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐬𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐬. Someone who can't fit into your team can cause many problems, such as other engineers leaving, communication issues, and a drop in team productivity.⁣ ⁣ 𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐞’𝐬 𝐦𝐲 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐚 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐝𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧 𝐚𝐧 𝐒𝐌𝐁 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐩. 𝐈𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝟑 𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐬:⁣ ⁣ 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐇𝐑: The goal here is to learn more about the candidate, who they are, what they like, their expectations for the position, and how they see their career in 5 years. (𝟑𝟎 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐬)⁣ ⁣ 𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝟐 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦 𝐦𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐬: Why 2? Because 1 person may have a biased opinion about the candidate, so adding another member ensures fairness. The technical test should focus on something you actually need in the team. For example, if you need a great problem solver, choose a mid-level algorithm to solve. Why "mid-level"? Because the candidate you're interviewing isn't at 100% due to stress, which affects their reasoning skills. This should be considered when choosing the exercise. (𝟒𝟓 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐬-𝟏 𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐫)⁣ ⁣ 𝐌𝐞𝐞𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 (𝐂𝐓𝐎, 𝐕𝐏 𝐨𝐟 𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦): Why is this very important? Would you let a stranger into your house? No… It’s the same for a tech team. You need to know every single person who joins the team! You can't let anyone in without validating them yourself. The goal here is to run a final check before giving an offer. (𝟑𝟎 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐬)⁣ ⁣ These steps are enough to know if someone fits your team. It's not the ultimate framework, but it's enough to recruit. Mistakes happen, you can't know someone 100% from the start. Let time reveal if they're the right candidate. Building a great team takes time, but so do all good things. ⁣ What's your current hiring process?⁣ ⁣ #leadership

I reject 98% of the engineers I interview. Here’s why: 6+ years of running an agency and leading 40+ team members And I still rely on these 3 things whenever I am hiring engineers. But before I tell you my 3 secrets of hiring, here’s a little backstory: My 15+ years of experience has taught me that code maintainability has higher ROI than clever code. But maintainable code can be subjective. It can be one thing to you and something completely different to me. So, here’s how I define it: - it should be easy to make changes to - it should not invite accidental mistakes from engineers - a new engineer should be able to understand it without much hand holding And based on this definition I refine my team of best engineers in 3 steps: 1. Sourcing- Recruitment team shortlists those with basic skills needed for the job. 2. Assessment ↳ The assessment includes simple questions like ‘Design an Alarm clock’. → In this round we judge them for the clean, maintainable code they write → We use OOP and SOLID principles to evaluate the code → Unfortunately, a large percentage fails at this level only 3. Interview ↳ The ones who brave through the assessment are selected for the interview. → We observe them for their fundamentals in this round → This includes doing an in person code review of their assessment → We observe if they understand the time and space complexity of their solution All through these rounds, we also focus on some of their soft skills like: → Problem solving skills → How easy they are to work with → How curious they are towards their job And out of 100 candidates we interview, we select only 5 of them. Because a lot of them only focus on: → Data structure → Leet code style questions → Optimizing code for specific use-case What they rather need to focus on is: — To build on their basic and fundamental engineering skills. What practices do you use to build your dream team of engineers? P.S. Meet my happy team of Jalan Technologies. They all say "Hiiiiiiiiiii :)"

Boost Your Tech Hiring Success by 4.7x: The Secret to a Faster and More Accurate Engineer Selection. If you're still hiring engineers with traditional System Design challenges, here’s a way to modify it to achieve a boost in speed and quality: Simply share the challenge with the applicant in advance, and you’ll see a significantly better outcome. After 15+ years in Software Engineering, I still don’t understand how others can make hiring decisions based on an interview with a person who operates in a stressful, artificial environment. This is exactly how most companies run technical interviews, especially in system design. Often, the interviewer recognizes it as a system design challenge by presenting a random problem that might have nothing in common with the real challenges at the company. Some examples are nonsensical, like "let’s build Facebook Messenger for a billion users," or "design cross-regional ID generation," when in reality you might only have five customers from one region. I can’t imagine an applicant who wouldn’t be stressed during such an interview round (except perhaps those well-practiced in LeetCode). That is natural for humans, but it is detrimental to hiring because, in real life, engineers usually have time to think carefully about problems in a stress-free environment. The traditional System Design approach does everything to minimize the chances for an applicant to show their best. I’m always looking at how to minimize stress for applicants with the primary intent to see how a person operates in a normal mode. Try this: Instead of making the interview full of surprises, just share the System Design task in advance to give the applicant a chance to be prepared, be confident, and show their best. In the first 10 minutes, you can make a hiring decision simply by observing how well the applicant has prepared for the interview. The best applicants take any chance to be prepared, with diagrams, explanations, alternatives, and a confidence boost.

Here are my top 3 interview questions for interviewing software engineers as a non technical person and my reasons why 🔎👩💻👀 I've been interviewing software engineers for over 15 years now, I've used lots of different questions but these are the best ones for identifying top engineering talent. 1️⃣ What is the difference between a good versus great software engineer? ❔ No right or wrong answer, the person has to give an opinion ❔ It will tell you a lot about them, naturally the person will default to what they prioritise and value as a software engineer ❔ Do they just talk about purely tech stuff (code quality, testing etc)? What I'm hoping for is someone who thinks about their broader impact, on the business, product, users and people around them. 🧪 Testing for whether people see "great" as purely tech related. 2️⃣ In your last role, which feature/service/project did you work on that you felt delivered the most value to your users/customers? ❔ As a non technical user, I want to see how they can describe something possibly complex in an easy to understand way ❔How do they understand their user/business needs? What was the problem they set out to solve and why? ❔ How do they define and quantify value? What impact did the new feature/service have on the user/solving that problem? 🧪 Testing for the ability to communicate clearly in non technical jargon and demonstrate product mindset. 3️⃣ What is one thing you have introduced or changed that helped the engineers in your team become better engineers? OR What is one thing you introduced that improved how your team works? ❔ To be able to identify a problem/area to improve, they need to have a good understanding of the SDLC / ways of working ❔ Do they then have the ability and motivation to make a change within their team? Do they care enough to want to? ❔ How do they understand and communicate the impact of this change? 🧪 Testing for understanding of ways of working, ability to influence positive change and care for continuous improvement. I'm not technical so I'm not going to try to be. What I can assess for is those critical competencies connected to how someone thinks and their soft skills. These questions will help you filter in the top engineers. Thoughts? Any other great questions non-tech interviewers use when interviewing software engineers? #talentacquisition #interviewing #candidates #tech #hiring #recruitment

Technical Assessment, Coding Challenge, Case Study, Take-Home Test... 💻 💭 Almost every modern hiring process requires some form of (more or less practical) work sample from its applicants. When done right, these tests provide confirmation of the candidate’s ability and “hard skills” to succeed in the role. But it’s no news that these tests are a much-disputed topic, especially when it comes to tech talent. While some companies are confident about their lengthy hiring process, developers often feel these are not compatible with having a full-time job and a personal life 🤔 Your technical assessment can boost, or decay your reputation, and developers will spread the word. A great tech assessment will result in more qualified inbound applications and an increased response rate to your outbound recruiting. 👉 Want to know how to build a technical assessment that can boost your reputation and reduce cost of hiring? Check our article: https://buff.ly/4cwbPrg #hr #technicalassessment #hiring #diverseteams

I'll never forget interviewing a developer whose portfolio was a 1:1 copy of a popular online tutorial… This was supposed to be a Senior React Developer interview. “Oh no.” was my first thought. We were in the middle of building a large React app and we needed a few more hands on deck. Our mission → Hire developers, fast. 1st (failed) attempt: We asked HR for help. They saw "senior" in the title and automatically put a requirement for 10 years of experience when React itself was only about 6 years old at the time… 2nd (failed) attempt: We tried recruitment agencies. Some days, we'd interview devs who wanted to take over and rebuild the entire (brand new) system. Other days, we interviewed those who barely knew what React was. My calendar was filled with 2-3 interviews per week, many of them being unqualified candidates. We were struggling to meet project deadlines and endless interviewing wasn't helping… There had to be a better way. When I joined G2i Inc., I understood their value immediately. Their hiring process was efficient, effective, and fast. During the interview process, G2i quickly uncovers developers who have: → Real world development experience → Shipped actual products → Solved complex problems The idea of partnering with someone who can identify quality candidates before they even reach my calendar is perfect. Hiring managers know time is a competitive advantage in our industry. → Every interview sucks time from your dev projects. → Every mismatch sabotages your progress. But you no longer need to sift through unqualified resumes. Instead, you get a shortlist of A-players who actually meet your requirements, in less than 72 hours. You're saving yourself from being stuck in fruitless interviews and the stress of lengthy, unproductive hiring processes. We're not just interviewing developers who can pass software trivia… but someone who has expertise, experience, and passion for quality. These are the candidates we deliver fast to help companies build an engineering team shipping an exceptional product. Send me a DM if you need help.

Looking for a developer job and struggling to get an interview? You're talking to the wrong people 😮. You've heard countless times to send an email/DM to the hiring manager. There is only one problem: 𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞. 𝐃𝐨𝐞𝐬. 𝐈𝐭. 𝐍𝐨𝐰. Hiring managers admit it's a turnoff because it's more work to process. What used to a crafty way to stand out has quickly become common place. Luckily, there is pool of company resources that remain untapped: 💡 Other Software Developers 💡 Sending a LinkedIn to a Software developer at the company you are applying to can do wonders: ➡️ They aren't messaged on LinkedIn very often. ➡️ They have a personal stake to make sure someone good is hired ➡️ They can give you some good insights to the role and process. Start with a simple script and build to a natural conversation. Before you know it, you might have an ally on the inside. 𝑯𝒊 𝑱𝒆𝒏𝒏𝒂, 𝑰 𝒋𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒂𝒑𝒑𝒍𝒊𝒆𝒅 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑺𝒆𝒏𝒊𝒐𝒓 𝑹𝒆𝒂𝒄𝒕 𝒓𝒐𝒍𝒆 𝒂𝒕 𝑿. 𝑰 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒉𝒐𝒑𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒅𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒍𝒐𝒑𝒆𝒓 𝒕𝒐 𝒅𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒍𝒐𝒑𝒆𝒓 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒎𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒈𝒊𝒗𝒆 𝒎𝒆 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆 𝒇𝒆𝒆𝒅𝒃𝒂𝒄𝒌 𝒐𝒏 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒊𝒕'𝒔 𝒍𝒊𝒌𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒌 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆. 𝑻𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒌𝒔 𝒔𝒐 𝒎𝒖𝒄𝒉! Found this useful? My last of 2024 interview Master Class is 12/4. Right now 20% off! DM me for details. #recruiting #startups #developerjobs ________ 👋 Hi, I'm Tony, the recruiter next door. I help start ups scale teams fast. Follow me for hiring advice and roles I am filling.