3 Interview Strategies You Need to Use Now

In a growing tech company, it’s tough to hire tech workers quickly, minimize costs, and ensure new hires are a great fit for your company. In addition to syncing with your hiring team, relying on engineers to run coding interviews often feels like a major, expensive pain. 

For example, let’s say ?software? ?developer? ?Denise? earns 2,500 ?shares per? ?year over four years and ?works? ?50 hours each? ?week? (2,600? ?hrs?/?year is roughly ?1? ?share? ?per? ?hour).? ?If she? ?spends? ?three? ?hours? ?per? ?interview, each interview costs the company ?$300? ?just in the cost of her equity. On top of that, like many tech employees, her high salary and loss of production must also be considered when calculating the opportunity cost of Denise taking time to interview. So, in short, interviews need to be highly effective. 

Amazon, Intel, Facebook, and Tesla are several of today's top companies, and the key to their success is their practice of not just innovating externally with products and services but also internally with their teams. Their use of modern interviewing techniques saves them time and money because there’s less of an emphasis placed on engineers conducting interviews for technical skills, and more of a focus on hiring employees who go above and beyond in commitment to their company’s missions. Below, we look at these techniques: 

1) Amazon - “The Bar Raiser Method”

The Bar Raiser method Amazon uses has proved to be incredibly effective in finding employees who fit with Amazon’s beliefs and values. According to Fast Company, Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, said, "I'd rather interview 50 people and not hire anyone than hire the wrong person." The method involves having employees from various departments serve as “bar-raisers,” who spend 20-30 interviewing and making decisions on potential employees for jobs in different fields from their own. For example, someone in marketing may interview a software engineer and has the authority to reject a candidate if he/she doesn’t “raise the bar”. The benefit? Having people with different backgrounds involved in the interview process leads to inherent selectivity and reduced bias in candidate selection. 

Because bar raisers have different skill sets, they can see candidates from varying perspectives and filter for a cultural fit in addition to technical skills. But, when a company has to hire quickly, sometimes hiring managers’ priorities are short term and they resort to finding people who can get the job done without much consideration for company culture. Instead, bar raisers ensure that new hires are highly qualified AND can positively contribute to overall environment and performance of the company.

2) Intel - “Positive Candidate Experience” 

Intel’s approach makes the interview experience as positive as possible to help the company maintain a high acceptance rate. A positive candidate experience also motivates highly qualified candidates to reapply if they don’t make it the first time. In 2016, Intel was one of the winners of the Glassdoor’s Candidate Choice Awards as one of the Best Places to Interview with a score of 82%. In 2015, Intel was ranked as the top tech company for its interview experience. Providing a positive interview gives the company a greater image and makes rejected candidates more likely to apply again. Because the tech market is so competitive, these efforts are incredibly important especially when it comes to hiring fast. 

3) Facebook, Tesla - Passion Approach

Facebook’s and Tesla’s interview strategies focus on gauging candidates’ passion for their companies’ missions in order to select people who genuinely care about their causes rather than those who apply for the brand.

According to Tesla engineer James Wong on Quora, there are two characteristics Tesla looks for during the interview process: how passionate you are about the company and whether you can handle hard, innovative work and long hours. Facebook filters through candidates in a similar way. Miranda Kalinowski, Facebook's global head of recruiting, says that one of her favorite questions is, "On your very best day at work — the day you come home and think you have the best job in the world — what did you do?"

Because both companies constantly rely on innovation, they need people who are passionate and want to make an impact. When employees don’t love what they’re doing, they have little or no interest in providing new products and services. Innovation isn’t prioritized. 

For most companies, an extensive hiring process, while intending to be thorough, is often tedious , outdated and and wasteful. But, the bar raiser method, focusing on improving the candidate experience, and finding passionate people are techniques that any company can implement immediately to grow rapidly and find employees who fit. Try them!