Vladimir Klepov as a Coder

It's hard to believe, but, starting mid-october 2023 I conducted 60 technical interviews and hired 10 people into our team. It's been extremely tiring: around 80 hours of active interviewing, plus writing interview reports, plus screening CVs and take-home assignments, plus onboarding new members — all while doing my normal work stuff. Still, I feel like I learnt a lot in the process — things that would help me as a candidate in the future, and might help you land your next job.

Note that I'm a fairly relaxed interviewer, and, as an internal startup of a large tech company, we generally have a more humane hiring process, so your mileage may vary. Still, I've done my best to pick the tips that I feel are universally applicable.

Say you're a solid higher-middle engineer, and you ask for a senior salary. My thought process: OK buddy, it's a bit more than reasonable now, but I won't have to fight for your promotion 8–12 months from now when you get there, and I don't have to spend another 12 hours of my own time (and leave my team understaffed for another few weeks) looking for a real hardcore senior, so I'll let you have it. Now suppose you ask for a junior salary. It's suspicious — why is your bar so low? Is there someting about your work performance you're not telling us? So, do your research on reasonable salaries for your level of experience, and aim slightly above that.

I always leave time for the candidate to ask me questions — obviously, this lets the candidate probe what it's like to work at our team, but it's also the best opportunity for me to learn what really matters to the candidate. I've never been much of an asker myself, but now I see that "Thanks, I have no questions" does not look good — if anything, it paints you as someone who doesn't care. Here's a short list of good questions:

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