Ask HN: Best way to do coding screens?
1 danielandrews43 2 5/28/2025, 4:01:10 PM
Our interview process is fairly quick:
1. 15 minute phone call
2. 30 minute coding challenge on zoom
3. Paid onsite
What we’re struggling with is many people are passing the first phone call and then completely flipping the coding challenge. Many of the applicants don’t know how to code. These are people with 5+ years of experience as a software engineer.
It's a frontend role, and we're only interviewing people with React experience (at the moment!). Basically, the goal is to pull data from a server and display it. Correct solutions are 25-30 lines of JSX.
How do you structure your interview process to maximize the time you’re spending talking to qualified applicants?
- Some people might face difficulties trying to solve a live coding exercise if it requires some thinking.
What are you discussing in the 15 minute phone call? Do you spend any time probing their coding knowledge?
Before the phone call, are you looking for examples of their work in open source or public repos?