The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing (version 3.0)

The optimal time to make a decision about the candidate is about three minutes after the end of the interview. (...) I ask interviewers to write immediate feedback after the interview, either a “hire” or “no hire”, followed by a one or two paragraph justification. It’s due 15 minutes after the interview ends.

I always leave about five minutes at the end of the interview to sell the candidate on the company and the job. This is actually important even if you are not going to hire them. If you’ve been lucky enough to find a really good candidate, you want to do everything you can at this point to make sure that they want to come work for you. Even if they... See more

Look for passion. Smart people are passionate about the projects they work on. They get very excited talking about the subject.

Don’t ask around about the person before you interview them; and never, ever talk to the other interviewers about the candidate until you’ve both made your decisions independently. That’s the scientific method.

OK, I didn’t tell you the most important part—how do you know whether to hire someone? In principle, it’s simple. You’re looking for people who are Smart, and Get things done.

Even if you have a candidate that would be brilliant at doing your particular task, but wouldn’t be very good in another team, that’s a No Hire. In software, things change so often and so rapidly that you need people that can succeed at just about any programming task that you throw at them.