What kind of test can you give the candidates as part of the interview?

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100% Agree with @kinofrost Chris knows his stuff.

  1. I hate people giving me “homework” to do beforehand, and will only do homework for a job where I already like the company already. In todays world it’s a buyers market, so don’t hurt your chances. A screening test, perhaps online that takes less than an hour or two is my limit these days.
  2. Definitely have a “problem solver” type test, places I have worked at have used things like “test this wristwatch”, all the way to actual product-related ones, perhaps revolving around detecting a defect class you recently had in the product. Design the “exercise” to gain insight into how the candidate views topics such as documentation and process. Throw in a question on easy “controversial” things like the testing pyramid The Software Testing Pyramid - #10 by paulmaxwellwalters if the candidate is not very forthcoming. “Miro” boards might be a good tool for technical stage interviews if you have to interview remotely.
  3. Don’t let the dev manager run the entire interview process, unless the company is hiring a tester to work “in” the dev team? Your strategy of using the 1st round to check “people-fit” of a candidate and the second round to check “technical ability” is what most people use. Don’t second-guess, and always have 2 interviewers present in all stages of the process, a bit like having a safety-latch.
  4. It’s good to have a batch of insider knowledge questions about the tech stack that only a practitioner will know the answer to. Choose questions based on their CV, so it does require some pre-reading of their CV. Where i work, we have a curated list of hard questions that we keep on our wiki. It’s OK if they don’t know, but if they get enough of them wrong, you can know to stop the process.

Aside: Still shocked that new hires managed to leave you so soon after joining, that may point to a onboarding problem or structure problem…but . The crowd I work for are hiring too, we also notice we get a lot of candidates who cannot do what their CV says, so it’s not a unique problem.

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