Ask HN: What is the best way to test whether someone is top candidate?

1 pointlurifaxn2 comments

What would you say is the most indicative factor of whether someone is likely to perform well on the job or not?

IMO, whiteboarding is only a part of the interview process. Probe their breadth and depth of knowledge relevant to the expertise you seek (for instance, if you were seeking an expert in databases, ask about pros and cons of various data stores, search, RESTful access, scaling), look at community (online/offline) presence (Github, HN, LinkedIn connections, Tweets, Klout, Meetups, etc.), agility (since you're probably a startup - simple stuff like how fast they type or how efficient they're with the keyboard and mouse together), etc.

Most of all, if you don't feel that they're smarter than you, they're probably not right...

"how fast they type"

Personally, I think that is an extremely silly metric to base a recruitment decision on.

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