Do’s and Don’ts for Interviewing Software Engineer Candidates (and Other Team Members)

It’s standard practice to use live coding interviews to assess software engineers, but research and experience show that these can create artificial stress and don’t reveal a candidate’s true strengths. As a hiring manager, I’ve found that focusing on real-world skills and collaborative thinking leads to far better outcomes for both sides.

Here are three alternative approaches I recommend:

1. Dive into real project stories. Ask candidates about their favorite project (or most challenging, most collaborative, etc.), what made it meaningful, and how they overcame obstacles along the way. This shifts the focus away from “performing” for the interviewer and gives the candidate a chance to show genuine passion, problem-solving, and subject matter expertise. You’ll get a much richer sense of their thought process and technical depth.
2. Prioritize code review over code writing. Instead of whiteboarding new code, have candidates review a real pull request, analyze a repo for improvements, or discuss architectural decisions. This mirrors day-to-day engineering work and lets them demonstrate knowledge in a relaxed, authentic way. You’ll see how they approach quality, communication, and collaborative problem-solving.
3. Create an open-ended playground. Give access to a sandbox environment and some real data. Let the candidate choose their tools, ask their own questions, and follow their curiosity. Keep it open-ended and stress-free. The goal is to observe how they explore, what they value, and how they’d apply themselves in your environment.

Applying These Practices Beyond Engineering:While these examples focus on software engineers, the same principles work across other roles: design, product, writing, marketing, analytics, and more. Invite candidates to critique a real product or interface, explore a Figma file, analyze a campaign, review actual performance data, suggest optimizations for a landing page or content strategy, walk through a favorite dashboard, review a data model, explore a dataset, or examine team documentation hubs. The common thread is creating space for authentic demonstration of skill, judgment, and collaborative thinking.

Bottom line: Great interviews reveal the way candidates think, collaborate, and learn, rather than how quickly they can solve a contrived problem. Build your process around trust, curiosity, and real-world scenarios. You’ll make better hires and create a much better candidate experience.

What other approaches have you found effective for technical interviews?