Growth & full stack engineering interview script

Here is the basic interview script I use when I give growth and full stack engineering phone interviews. I give 1-3 interviews a week.

My good friend Sudhee points out that this coding interview script is severely lacking in its ability to build the relationship between the interviewer and the engineer. I deeply agree, and I'd welcome your ideas on how to improve it. My email is at the end of the article.

Phone Interview Script

• "Hi {{firstname}}, this is David Trejo calling from {{my-company}} :) – Did I catch you at a bad time?"
• Say that I'll intro myself, then they'll briefly intro themselves, then a coding question, then last 10 minutes for questions from them, so they know how the call is structured.
• I briefly intro myself & mention technologies & 1 recent cool project
• They briefly intro themselves
• Coding starts
  • "Please choose whichever language you feel most comfortable with"
  • "Run your code as often as you want, I don't care about typos, I just want us to catch stuff early"
  • "Ask me any questions you have, and I'll help you get unstuck, think of this like a pairing session"
  • One of my coworkers also says it’s okay to Google:

    "I explicitly tell candidates that if they need to open browser tabs to google things they should, because I’m not trying to test anyone’s memorization skills"

• 10 mins for questions
• "Thanks {{firstname}}, we'll be in touch soon :)"

Note: it's important to try to smile during the start/end of the call, because the other person can hear it, and it will help them do better on the problem, because they're less stressed. Also, saying their name twice is very important to make them feel good.

Something I do which is less standard*:

• If they're really close to finishing I give them the choice to follow up over email with a working solution (most people do follow up and finish)
• If we're really close and they want to use their question time to keep working, I strongly suggest they ask me questions over email (most people do follow up with questions)

* Because the problem I give has the difficulty of an on-site problem, delivered over the phone, I like to be more forgiving.

This means I know they can code, and they can finish the problem successfully.

Good luck,
David Trejo
Email me ✉️

PS One suggestion from Sudhee, is to say something to personalize it and break the ice at the start of the call. For example, "I saw you committing on github on saturday night and I knew we had to talk!!"

The phone interview is an opportunity to build a relationship with the candidate, not just something mechanical that your boss forces you to administer. You want to make a connection. This won't be easy to do in every company.