After probing a candidate's past, 'flip the table' and present them with a current, real-world problem your company faces. This reveals their curiosity, analytical skills, and ability to engage with a new challenge on the spot, shifting from their prepared stories to raw problem-solving.

To find talent capable of managing an AI stack, traditional interviews are insufficient. A better test is to provide candidates with platform credits (e.g., Replit) and challenge them to build a functional agent that automates a real business task, proving their practical skills.

Cursor requires engineering and design candidates to spend two days in the office working on a real project. This unorthodox process tests for agency and culture fit and has been maintained despite scaling to over 200 people, proving its value in assessing true on-the-job performance and mutual fit.

With LLMs making remote coding tests unreliable, the new standard is face-to-face interviews focused on practical problems. Instead of abstract algorithms, candidates are asked to fix failing tests or debug code, assessing their real-world problem-solving skills which are much harder to fake.

Dreamer's hiring process now evaluates an engineer's ability to work with and through AI coding agents. Beyond a basic coding screen, the main interview involves a project built using tools like Codex, testing the candidate's skill in prompting, reviewing, and orchestrating AI to be productive.

Vercel's hiring process for design leaders includes a take-home assignment, a practice typically for junior roles. This lets candidates demonstrate real-world problem-solving and buy-in strategies, which are difficult to assess from a portfolio of team-led projects, while also helping the candidate evaluate the company.

A common hiring mistake is prioritizing a conversational 'vibe check' over assessing actual skills. A much better approach is to give candidates a project that simulates the job's core responsibilities, providing a direct and clean signal of their capabilities.

To avoid hypothetical interview questions, Zipline makes its hiring process as applied as possible. This includes pair programming, collaborative design sessions, and even offering paid 1-2 week work trials. This "work together" approach quickly reveals a candidate's true fit and capabilities.

For roles where skills are difficult to assess in standard interviews, Clay implements a 2-3 week paid "work trial." This allows the company to evaluate a candidate's actual performance and fit on real tasks before extending a full-time offer, de-risking the hiring process for complex positions.