At my current client project, the group I am with is expanding rapidly based on recent success of agile projects in the last two years. With the reputation of our group increasing, our group is in demand for development to support the business. This is a great thing.
This means the group has opened up several positions for agile developers. It also means that the core members of the group have to interview several candidates to fill 6-10 positions. Not only does this take time and effort, but it also takes a disciplined approach to obtain the best candidates.
Along the way, we have developed a patterned approach to interviewing candidates. So far it has yielded high quality agile members joining the team. I hope to give an brief overview of the approach taken.
Team Members Participate in Interview
The interview process does not just involve the manager and the new candidate. We include a few members of the team during the interview as well. This gives the benefit of various perspectives and also establishes team ownership of the decision to bring on an individual. Existing team members, along with the managers, get exposure to the new candidate for up to 3 hours possibly (we first do a phone screen, then a face to face). This amount of exposure across team members only helps with obtaining high quality developers.
