Member-only story
Why Pair Programming Is the Best Interview Approach for Hiring
Pair programming helps recruit the best candidates with the least amount of effort
Most people hate pair programming with a burning passion. But the people that like it, love it.
While we use it on the job, it’s also my favorite technique for interviewing potential hires. Pairing is a better predictor of job success than any other technique I’ve tried.
It allows vetting candidates for behavioral competencies, technical skills, and company fit, all at the same time.
That sounds crazy, but hear me out.
Most Interviewing Techniques Don’t Predict Success
Most interview methods merely test that a candidate is prepared for the interview.
But they are often far removed from the ability to write features in a complex app on the job.
Whiteboarding questions
Algorithm questions on a whiteboard give you information about a candidate’s intelligence and ability to write code under stress. But success is primarily a function of preparedness.
Even senior engineers will struggle if they don’t practice beforehand.
While they’re an excellent way for large tech companies to filter potential talent for dedication and brains, this doesn’t mean they’re suitable for small- and medium-sized companies, who just need someone to do a job.
Mastery of algorithms and data structures doesn’t say much about a candidate’s ability to hit the ground running with a given language and framework.
Language or framework questions
I’ve also found these to be useless.
Asking a candidate to describe a promise in JavaScript or a decorator in Python will only stump a junior engineer. While asking about an obscure detail of a given framework will likely confuse a senior engineer if they haven’t specifically looked into it before.
Worse than that, these questions suffer from their disconnect to actual software development. If you temporarily forget something while…
