CriticCode Blog
Writing on interviewing
in the age of AI.
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· 6 min read
Reducing hiring bias in engineering interviews
Hiring bias isn't a single thing you can eliminate. It's a bundle of inconsistencies in how candidates get read. Here's which structural levers actually move the needle and which don't.
hiring engineering-management interviewing -
· 6 min read
How to write a good technical interview challenge
A technical interview challenge isn't just a prompt. It's a whole design problem — scope, difficulty, evaluation, and iteration. Here's how to think about each layer.
interviewing hiring challenge-design -
· 5 min read
What to look for in a technical assessment tool as a startup
'What's the best technical assessment tool for startups?' is the wrong question. The right one is: what shape of hiring do I want to run, and which tool gets out of the way? Here's a framework for answering it.
hiring interviewing engineering-management -
· 5 min read
AI collaboration is a core engineering skill now
AI collaboration is no longer a bonus skill or a controversial edge. It's a core engineering competency, with the same status as version control or reading documentation. Hiring processes are slow to catch up.
ai hiring engineering-management -
· 5 min read
How to prepare for a follow-up interview
Most follow-up interviews are prepared for in the ten minutes before the call starts. That's where the signal leaks out. Here's a 25-minute prep workflow that changes the quality of the whole round.
interviewing hiring engineering-management -
· 5 min read
Take-home projects are broken. The shape isn't.
The take-home as most teams run it in 2026 is broken — asymmetric, ambiguous about AI, reviewed in a hurry, graded by whoever has time. The underlying shape is still the right answer. The packaging is the problem.
take-home hiring interviewing -
· 5 min read
Why live coding tests fail modern engineers
Live coding tests were designed for a job that doesn't look much like the job anymore. The gap between the format and modern engineering work has widened faster than most interview processes have adapted.
interviewing hiring engineering-management -
· 5 min read
How to assess AI skills in a technical interview
Before you can test for 'AI skills', you have to decide what you mean. Here's a working taxonomy of the AI-related competencies that matter on the job, and how to design a round that catches each one.
ai interviewing hiring -
· 5 min read
How to use AI transcripts to run better interviews
Collecting an AI transcript is the easy part. Using it to change the shape of the interview and the debrief is where the real work is. Here's a workflow that holds up.
ai interviewing hiring -
· 4 min read
How to test if a candidate can use AI effectively
Most hiring teams say they want to hire engineers who work well with AI. Very few processes actually generate evidence of it. Here's a short audit of what counts as signal and what doesn't.
ai interviewing hiring -
· 5 min read
Rejection is a feedback loop your team is probably ignoring
Most teams treat candidate rejection as admin. It's actually one of the cleanest ways to learn whether your interview process is calibrated, if you let the information back in.
engineering-management hiring candidate-experience -
· 5 min read
Pair-programming interviews: what they're actually good for
Pair-programming interviews are better than live coding at some things and worse at others. Here's what they actually measure, and when they're the right round to run.
interviewing hiring engineering-management -
· 5 min read
Senior and junior candidates shouldn't share one interview process
Most teams run the same interview structure for junior, mid, and senior candidates, with 'the bar' as the only variable. That's probably costing you both kinds of hire.
engineering-management hiring interviewing -
· 5 min read
The interview invitation email is doing more work than you think
When you invite a candidate for an interview, the email is the first real read they get on your team. Most invitation emails handle logistics and stop there. Here's what a good one does instead.
hiring candidate-experience interviewing -
· 5 min read
The questions a candidate asks you are a signal too
The last ten minutes of an interview are usually the most rushed. They're also where candidates reveal more about themselves than in the first fifty. Here's how to read them.
interviewing hiring candidate-experience -
· 5 min read
When the AI transcript looks suspiciously clean
A perfectly polished AI conversation looks great in the submission. It's also one of the clearer signs that the candidate wasn't really thinking. Here's what to watch for.
ai interviewing candidate-experience -
· 5 min read
What a realistic job interview actually feels like
'Realistic' is the most overused word in interview design. Most 'real-world' exercises don't feel like real work to the person doing them. Here's what the shape of a realistic job interview actually looks like.
interviewing hiring candidate-experience -
· 4 min read
Interview calibration is mostly a vocabulary problem
If two interviewers in your interview process mean different things by 'strong hire', they haven't calibrated. A rubric won't fix that. A shared vocabulary might.
engineering-management hiring interviewing -
· 5 min read
The interview transcript is a better artefact than your notes
Most teams leave a technical interview with a page of notes and call it a record. A transcript catches the things notes can't: pacing, framing, what was actually asked.
interviewing hiring engineering-management -
· 5 min read
The follow-up interview is where the take-home earns its keep
A take-home is an artefact. The follow-up conversation is where it turns into signal. Most teams leave that conversation entirely unstructured. Here's a shape that works.
interviewing take-home hiring -
· 5 min read
What a GitHub profile actually tells you about a candidate
Scanning a candidate's GitHub feels like getting a private peek. It's mostly not. Here's what you can actually learn from it and what you can't.
hiring interviewing candidate-experience -
· 4 min read
Your interview process needs a position on AI, not a policy
Most teams haven't really decided what to do about AI in interviews. Candidates can tell. The muddle costs you more signal than either extreme would. Pick a side.
ai interviewing hiring -
· 5 min read
Your first technical screen is probably doing three jobs at once
The first technical round after the recruiter call tries to filter for technical fit, team fit, and interest at once. It's not great at any of them.
interviewing hiring engineering-management -
· 4 min read
What a coding test for an interview actually measures
Coding tests were built to prove a candidate could write code. The format still looks the same; the signal doesn't. Here's what interview coding challenges actually measure in 2026, and what's worth measuring instead.
interviewing hiring engineering-management -
· 4 min read
The debrief is where most interview processes quietly break
Five interviewers can run five good sessions and still produce a bad hire if the debrief meeting is run like a popularity contest. Here's a different way to run it.
engineering-management hiring interviewing -
· 4 min read
Live coding rewards composure, not engineering
Live-coding interviews test whether a candidate can stay calm under surveillance while regurgitating a pattern they happened to remember. That's not a signal about engineering. Here's what we think is.
interviewing hiring engineering-management -
· 4 min read
How to ask a question a candidate can't rehearse
Every question in your interview process sits on a spectrum between 'the candidate has answered this thirty times' and 'the candidate has never thought about this before'. The second end is where the signal lives.
interviewing hiring engineering-management -
· 5 min read
What a good challenge statement looks like
The challenge statement is the hardest part of CriticCode to get right. Here's the shape of one that works, with worked examples for three common roles.
hiring interviewing challenge-design -
· 4 min read
How to read a candidate's AI transcript
The final written answer is the tidied version of the thinking. The AI chat transcript is where the actual thinking shows up. Here's how to scan one in under ten minutes.
ai interviewing hiring -
· 4 min read
Take-home interviews that respect everyone's time
If your take-home is longer than two hours of real work, you're filtering for candidates with free weekends, not candidates with judgement. Here's what a good one looks like.
take-home hiring interviewing -
· 4 min read
The paste event isn't cheating
Every time a candidate pastes a chunk of text into a take-home, some hiring manager reads it as a confession. It isn't. Here's how to read a paste event like a grown-up.
hiring ai interviewing -
· 4 min read
Candidates already use AI. Most interviews haven't caught up.
The 'no AI' clause on a take-home started as a quality filter. In 2026, it mostly ends up measuring whether the candidate is willing to pretend. Here's what we think it's worth measuring instead.
hiring ai interviewing