We schedule interviews over email (see examples of past exchanges in ‣). Once a time is agreed, we'll place a calendar hold with the interview location (physical, virtual, or otherwise) and any relevant context or instructions.

Interview formats

Our team uses Zoom internally, but we're generally happy to meet candidates in person, over Google Meet, a Slack call, or wherever else is comfortable for them. From there, we'll:

  1. Stick to what works. Once we've settled on a tool/channel, we'll schedule subsequent interview stages there, too. Wrestling with new videoconferencing tools isn't helpful to anyone.
  2. Keep video on. Our team usually enables video for internal calls, and—unless otherwise discussed—we'll do the same throughout the interview process.
  3. Screenshare > online editors. We've wrestled with codesandbox, codepen, the lot of them. Past candidates (and our team members, too) do much better work when using familiar tools, and we'd much rather see someone working in their native environment.

Technology issues

Gremlins are real. If we're scheduled to share screens, for instance, we try to create space for a candidate to shake things down ahead of time:

Since we'll be screen sharing over $PLATFORM, it's worth a note that if screen sharing hasn't been used with it before it often requires additional security authorizations at the OS level—and they don't show up until attempting to start sharing!

The link in the calendar invite should allow you to join anytime between now and $DAY if you'd like to give it a test run.

Ultimately, we're not assessing anyone on their hardware, permissions, or network connectivity. If we need to make accommodations (extra time) to offset a technology blip, no problem. And if the power's out or a cable's down, we should do our best to reschedule for a better time.