Status: LIVE

Hiring Process

Philosophy

• Prefer character over skill.

• Prefer aptitude over experience.

• The best way to attract great people is to already have great people (and culture). On face value that's not helpful, but the key takeaway in the context of hiring, is that when in doubt, it is better to miss out on a good candidate than to hire a bad one. Yes, firing is an option, but the morale price to the team of enduring a bad team member, and seeing them fired is anything but negligible.

• Remember that good candidates are rarer than good companies. That means the interview is just as much an evaluation of our company by the candidate, if not more, than the other way round, and we should act accordingly (read below).

How the interviewer should behave

• Show respect for the candidate’s time.

• Don’t grill candidates with fizzbuzz unnecessarily.

• Interviewing is a stressful experience for the candidate, so always dedicate the first few minutes of an interview for banter and friendly chit chat until the candidate has settled into the situation and relaxed. The interviewers are humans too, we should show that.

• Introduce yourself to the candidate and give a little background, like what discipline you come from. For example, a software engineer candidate would like to know that he is talking to a fellow software engineer (this is not always obvious to the candidate).

• If during the interview the candidate gets stressed, offer proactive encouragement. Saying “you should relax” is probably not going to work in that situation. But you can offer positive feedback if the answers are good. If you feel like the candidate is super stressed, offer a 5 minute toilet break, to give them a chance to take a breath and think in peace for a second – offering a toilet break is a good way of creating that space without having to remind the candidate that they’re appearing stressed.

• Remember that one of the most common failure modes of interviews is that the candidate doesn’t understand what’s being asked of them. The context of “interview setting” can sometimes make the candidate hesitate whether they should ask for clarification. Be proactive in this regard: always restate the question at least twice (once with different phrasing), and actively ask the candidate if they know what’s being asked of them.

• Don’t set arduous or long homework assignments. If this is necessary for proper candidate evaluation, consider how to compensate the candidate for their effort (get approval from the HoPe for such compensations).

• Don’t ask for work samples which would induce the candidate to break confidentiality (e.g. asking for code examples from the previous employer is a no go).

• Allow time for the candidate to ask their own questions. Answer them truthfully. If you cannot answer them, offer them a chance to email in with questions after the interview.

• Provide feedback to the candidate quickly. It is ideal is if you can give the candidate some quick feedback at the end of the interview process, especially if your feeling is positive. A quick “I still have to talk to the team, but so far I have a good feeling about this” (if you mean it) is a great thing to say, and for a candidate to hear, and can keep the mood high in this generally quite stressful process.

• At the end, set expectations on what the next steps are, and when the candidate can expect to hear from us. Keep the candidate in the loop on progress of their application, especially if there are delays on our side.

9Y’s Hiring Process

1. Culture fit interview

   • 1h long.

   • Typically done between the candidate and one of: CEO, CTO, CRO, or HoP.

   • The interviewer is trying to evaluate the question: “would the candidate feel well as a member of our team, and conversely would our team be happy to spend many hours each day with this person?“.

2. Skill check interview

   • 1h-2h long.

   • Typically done between the candidate and their future SL and TL.

   • The interviewers are trying to evaluate the question: “Can the candidate do the job which they are being hired for, and at what proficiency?“.

3. Internal discussion

   • At this stage all interviewing parties, as well as the HoPe, sit together and discuss the candidate.

   • The goal is to reach a provisional hire vs no-hire decision, as well as propose an appropriate compensation package.

4. Meet the team

   • 30m long.

   • If the candidate has a provisional hire decision, we invite them to meet a slightly larger group of current employees. Ideally this would be people whom the candidate would potentially work with in the future.

   • This should be an informal chance for the candidate to get to meet our team (helps the candidate make a good decision), and for our team to meet the candidate (helps create buy-in from the team).

   • Open questions from the candidate are encouraged.

5. Final internal discussion

   • 15m long.

   • Includes the HoPe, all interviewers, and everyone who was present at the “meet the team” session.

   • This is a chance to hear any concerns from the wider team. If there are any, they can be discussed, and potential next steps arranged to clarify them.

   • The wider team has veto powers over hiring decision. So if there are serious concerns regarding hiring this candidate, then they cannot be ignored by the HoPe.

   • If everyone is on board to hire the candidate, the HoPe extends a formal offer to the candidate.

Rejections

• When rejecting candidates, always inform the candidate about your decision. Never just ghost them – that's the worst possible thing we can do.

• Take the time to give the candidate a reason that helps them understand why it wasn't a good fit, it should be a real reason and not a generic canned response. Be gentle, but be truthful. Writing such a letter takes a good hour, the hiring lead should plan time in for this. The candidate spent their precious time interviewing with us, so we owe them this. Be clear in your language that we are not hiring, this cannot be ambiguous (as gently as possible). Example below.

• Beware of your own fallibility when writing the rejection letter. It’s very possible that the candidate can do all the things we are looking for and is actually a perfect hire, but just failed to demonstrate it. Or that we failed to interpret it correctly. So in your rejection letter, never use absolutes like “you don’t have skill xyz”, rather you should use phrasing like “during your interview, you didn’t demonstrate skill xyz”, as a way of acknowledging that interviewing is not an exact science.

Subject: Your interview at 9Y

Dear xxx,

I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to interview with us recently.

Unfortunately we won’t be moving forward with your application right now. You made a great impression, and there was a lot that we liked. However, ultimate we felt that it wouldn’t be a good fit. We are currently looking for a senior React.js/Typescript engineer with a lot of deep experience with that particular technology. You demonstrated a very broad skillset spanning many technologies, but didn’t demonstrate the deep experience in React that we were looking for. Even though you demonstrated skills in similar technologies like Angular, and we definitely believe that with time you could acquire these skills, we are currently looking for a senior developer who can lead a team using such technologies. I just wanted to take the time to explain our reasoning.

If you have some feedback to share regarding our interview process, or you feel like we judged the interviews poorly, please let me know. We recognise that interviewing is anything but an exact science, and that we might have gotten things wrong. There certainly is, and always will be, room for improvement in our interview process.

If I don’t hear from you, I just want to thank you again for spending the time, and I wish you all the best!

Best,
yyy