There's definitely a difference between hiring Sr. vs. Jr. programmers. When it comes to Sr, the best place I ever worked had a pretty great process:
1. Phone interview that was 100% identical for all candidates. It was basically a "take me through your work history, answering these 5 questions for each job." It worked wonderfully and gave a really good indication of what the person learned at each position and how they were able to apply that knowledge at the next job. And, if there was some obvious red flag at each step (e.g. "all my bosses have been jerks"). It also had the benefit of being more fair. I don't know how many places I've worked where if person A conducted the phone interview it was a shoe-in, and if person B did it was impossible to get through.
2. While doing #1, make a mental note of a couple things along they way they worked on (esp. if they seemed proud of them) and then - in a follow-up interview with a couple programmers on the call - really dig in deep on the technical details. Ask questions. You'll learn rapidly if they actually did the work and understand the problem or simply worked on it w/o understanding. What were the major challenges? What would they change now if they could go back? And here it's awesome if you get someone who can give answers that aren't always technical things (e.g. "I wish I knew early on how best to deal with X").
3. At this point, you're ready for an on-site and have already proven to yourself and the team "this person can code and solve problems." What's left is any final details you want to be sure of. Any odd personality quirks that won't work for the culture the company is going for? Let non-technical people they'd have to interface with interview them.
The best we ever came up w/ for Jr people was a test with some basic college class stuff like big-O and for problems 1-3 would you prefer linked list, hash table, or tree and why? And then try and do #1 and #2 above, but using their college classes/team projects as work experience. But that didn't always work out all that well.
There's definitely a difference between hiring Sr. vs. Jr. programmers. When it comes to Sr, the best place I ever worked had a pretty great process:
1. Phone interview that was 100% identical for all candidates. It was basically a "take me through your work history, answering these 5 questions for each job." It worked wonderfully and gave a really good indication of what the person learned at each position and how they were able to apply that knowledge at the next job. And, if there was some obvious red flag at each step (e.g. "all my bosses have been jerks"). It also had the benefit of being more fair. I don't know how many places I've worked where if person A conducted the phone interview it was a shoe-in, and if person B did it was impossible to get through.
2. While doing #1, make a mental note of a couple things along they way they worked on (esp. if they seemed proud of them) and then - in a follow-up interview with a couple programmers on the call - really dig in deep on the technical details. Ask questions. You'll learn rapidly if they actually did the work and understand the problem or simply worked on it w/o understanding. What were the major challenges? What would they change now if they could go back? And here it's awesome if you get someone who can give answers that aren't always technical things (e.g. "I wish I knew early on how best to deal with X").
3. At this point, you're ready for an on-site and have already proven to yourself and the team "this person can code and solve problems." What's left is any final details you want to be sure of. Any odd personality quirks that won't work for the culture the company is going for? Let non-technical people they'd have to interface with interview them.
The best we ever came up w/ for Jr people was a test with some basic college class stuff like big-O and for problems 1-3 would you prefer linked list, hash table, or tree and why? And then try and do #1 and #2 above, but using their college classes/team projects as work experience. But that didn't always work out all that well.