Most technical hiring fails at the same point: the person running the evaluation cannot evaluate the work. This playbook describes the process Nexton runs on every candidate — usable by any team, with any provider.
What is the core principle?
The interviewer must be a working engineer. Everything else is implementation detail. A recruiter tests communication; an engineer tests judgment. Judgment is what you are hiring.
Step by step
- Pick the interviewer from the same lane. Backend interviews backend. Seniority equal or higher than the role.
- Interview around real problems, not puzzles. Use scenarios from your actual stack: a scaling decision, a debugging session, an architecture trade-off. Leetcode measures preparation; scenarios measure judgment.
- Probe the reasoning, not the answer. Ask why. A senior engineer defends trade-offs; a keyword match recites.
- Write the evaluation immediately. What was tested, how the candidate reasoned, where they are strong and weak. If it is not written, it did not happen.
- Separate vetting from matching. Vet continuously, before demand exists. This is what makes speed possible later — Nexton's 72-hour matching works because screening already happened.
- Let the evaluation travel. The hiring team should read the interviewer's notes before the first call, and start from evidence.
How do you know it works?
Measure downstream: offer acceptance, ramp time, retention at 6 and 12 months.