Ask HN: When interviewing, what are the telltale signs of a very good candidate?

8 points by _sunshine_ ↗ HN
What are the signs you use to sort out the best candidates before an interview (or after having the initial chat with them)?

3 comments

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There are no universal signs that a candidate is very good. This is one of many reasons why hiring is difficult.
Hiring is very difficult. I think looking at a prospective hire with the same lens you'd use to review them is helpful.

So you're trying to understand how this perform as:

1. Employee - are they capable (motivation + skill) of doing a good job across the dimensions of quality and speed?

2. Owner - are they the kind of person who can display ownership of an area? This can be demonstrated by outside activities/projects they worked on, or ways they made their former work environment better/more efficient

3. Teammate - are they going to be a good teammate, a nice person, and collaborate well with others?

If you see red flags in any of these areas, probably not a good hire. If you see excellence in these, probably a great hire.

Our main metrics for hiring are be based on Skill, Knowledge, Quality, Ownership and Collaboration. Which is similar to @ruraltechnocrat. But I will explain how our process is and at what point we measure qualities.

1. Skill: we review his works in Github, Behance etc. If he made an application and release we will go through it also.

2. Knowledge: through interview

3. Quality: We will give him a one-week test task to make a small application using some web services like Flickr, Instagram etc.

4. Ownership & Collaboration: After reviewing the test task we will invite him to the office and work with the team on the real project. may be peer program with a developer.

This is a very long process but we got a better result from out old fashion of hiring. But Still @dsacco quote is very true, there is no universal sign for a good candidate.

Most of the candidates are like the yin-yang. but I had seen and inspired a lot of good managers who maintained the equilibrium in the team. This is something out of the scope of the question but shared the thought.

Peace