The document provides guidance on conducting effective interviews to identify candidates that are both smart and able to get things done. It recommends a multi-round interview process with multiple interviewers and assessing candidates on both technical skills and soft skills. Key aspects include focusing on how candidates explain concepts, think through problems, show passion for the work, and whether they can adapt when needed. The overall goal is to hire only the best candidates through a challenging but fair interview process.

1. Great Interviewing!
Based on Joel Spolsky’s Guerilla Guide
Sriram V Iyer

2. Objective of Interview
Identify people who are
1. Smart, AND
2. Get Things Done
Nothing MORE, Nothing LESS!

3. Interview Process
• Resume Filtering / Phone Screen (OPTIONAL, Not covered here)
• Face to Face Interviews
• 4-6 People interviewing
• 3 Rounds (Minimum)
• At the end of Interview, Complete the Assessment within 15 mins
of Interview, with Result: HIRE or NO HIRE
• More than two NO HIRE in a panel of 6 or more than one NO HIRE
in a panel of 4 means NO HIRE

4. Thumb Rules
• One Candidate, One to Three Interviewers
• Insist on solving it in Whiteboard (not paper)

5. Objective of Interview
Identify people who are
1. Smart, AND
2. Get Things Done
Nothing MORE, Nothing LESS!

6. Smart – But Cannot Get Things Done
• Typically high academic qualifications
• Overemphasis on theory instead of actual work
• Quite Eloquent
• But cannot ship
• NO HIRE

7. Not Smart, but Can get things done
• Ability to solve problems by brute force
• Usually can work only in a narrow domain
• Cannot adapt
• Useless beyond a certain domain
• We need to clean up the mess, later, at a MUCH higher cost
• NO HIRE

8. Detecting Smart
• Flow in conversation
• Candidate shows ingenuity, intellect
• Passionate (VERY important)
• Interviewers, Do NOT:
• Suppress the candidate! (Don’t talk more than what you should say)
• Ask Quiz questions: What is the third member of _FILE structure in stdio.h?

9. Hire or No Hire
• Only two possible outcomes of an Interview per interviewer:
• HIRE or NO HIRE
• No other Outcome – Hold, May be later, Not for my team 
• No Ability to Adapt => No Hire
• When in doubt… NO HIRE
• Mechanically translate anything other than HIRE to NO HIRE (e.g.,
Well, Hire, I guess, but I’m a little bit concerned about… => NO
HIRE)
• Cost of Bad Hires >> Cost of losing a good hire

10. Overall Flow of an Interview
• Introduction
• Question about recent project candidate worked on
• Easy Programming Question
• Pointer/Recursion Question
• Are you satisfied?
• Do you have any questions?

11. Identifying Good Candidates
• Passionate
• Ability to Explain
• Leadership Role
• How fast does he solve the easy questions? (Super fast is good!)
• Pointers / Recursion – Make or break in programming skills
• “Where is the bug?”
• Sell the company in the end, even if NO HIRE

12. Hiring the Best
• Really smart programmers LOVE to be challenged
• Challenging them is the best way to motivate them to join us!
• The other advantage of having a challenging interview is:
• Good candidates are hired
• Bad candidates will be filtered

13. Successful Interviewing
• KNOW / Understand the position you are hiring
• Extract the BEST from the candidate – Get him to a relaxed
position (Offer coffee?, Crack a joke, Talk something general –
Avoid politics, religion..)
• Remove prejudices (IIT, Way he looks etc)

14. Thank You!