Building Better Interview Processes: Lessons From the Candidate’s Side
Lessons from over twenty interviews across startups, scale-ups, and big tech — and what they reveal about how companies value people.
Earlier this year, I decided to take a step back. After twenty years working in software engineering, from writing bad code to leading large organizations, I took a sabbatical. Eight months away from the routine, intentionally slowing down, gave me the perspective I didn’t know I needed.
By the end of my sixth month, I felt ready to return. That meant applying, interviewing, and once again sitting on the other side of the table. What followed was a series of processes that were as revealing as surprising.
Some left me impressed, others disappointed, and many raised questions about how we treat people in such a critical moment, when they’re considering joining the company.
In this article, I will cover:
Highlights and lowlights of several interviewing processes I ran into;
What you should do as a team leader (not in HR);
and what HR should take into consideration.
The basics first: what defines a good interviewing process?
Before sharing stories from my recent months of interviews, it’s worth taking a step back. What makes an interview process good in the first place?
A good process is not about trick questions, endless rounds, or proving how “selective” a company can be. It’s about creating clarity, respect, and fairness for both sides. Research consistently shows that structured and transparent interviews lead not only to better candidate experiences but also to more reliable hiring decisions1.
The fundamentals include:
Clarity of purpose: every stage must have a reason. If you can’t explain why a round exists, it probably shouldn’t exist.
Consistency and structure: when interviewers are aligned and all candidates are asked the same role-relevant questions, bias is reduced and reliability improves. Unstructured interviews, by contrast, are among the weakest predictors of job performance2.
Respect for time: processes should keep to schedules, avoid last-minute cancellations, and acknowledge the candidate’s investment. Lack of closure — never hearing back after applying or interviewing — is one of the clearest signs of poor process.
Feedback and closure: every candidate deserves to know where they stand. Even a simple rejection email is better than silence, which communicates indifference and damages the company’s brand.
Transparency and expectation management: timelines, criteria, and outcomes should be communicated clearly. Overselling a role or creating unnecessary highs that collapse later is worse than being upfront from the start.
Adaptability: while structure is essential, conversations should flex to the candidate’s background. Experienced candidates won’t fit neatly into a script.
Trained interviewers: interviewing is a skill. Less experienced interviewers should be supported with clear rubrics, preparation, and pairing with senior colleagues to avoid superficial evaluations.
When these basics are present, interviewing shifts from a filtering mechanism to a meaningful two-way evaluation, one where both the company and the candidate can genuinely decide if they are the right fit for each other.
When the basics break down
With these principles in mind, my own experience re-entering the market showed just how often they are overlooked, and how much difference it makes when they are respected.
To give you a sense of scale, here’s how my interviews spread across company types:
Big Tech (10,000+ employees): 3 interview processes;
Large companies / global players (1,000+ employees): 7 interview processes;
Mid-size scale-ups (300–999 employees, high growth): 6 interview processes;
Startups / small organizations (~300 employees, often with founders involved): 5 interview processes;
I had 4 offers in total, from different clusters.
Each cluster carried its own patterns. Big Tech processes were highly structured and consistent. Large companies varied, some had strong frameworks, others showed cracks in alignment. Scale-ups often moved fast but at the cost of structure. And startups were the most personal, but also the least predictable.
Let’s jump into the facts.
What the clusters revealed
Big Techs: the gold standard
(10,000+ employees)
Big Techs were, by far, the best places to interview. Structured, consistent, and respectful processes. Every step had a clear purpose, interviewers were aligned, and expectations were well communicated. Even in rejection, you left with the sense that your time was valued and that the company had its process under control.
Highlights:
Process stages presented upfront with absolute clarity.
Immediate and constant availability of the recruiter throughout the process.
Interviewers were well-trained regarding timing, questions, and follow-up discussions.
Clear timelines, follow-ups exactly within the expected timeframe, and detailed feedback afterward.
Lowlights:
Processes sometimes felt too standardized, highly trained but at times overly scripted or even artificial.
Large companies: trying to balance scale and humanity
(1,000+ employees)
Large companies often sat in the middle. Some leaned closer to Big Tech in structure, others closer to scale-up chaos. In general, they seemed to be searching for the right balance between standardization and a human touch. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it slipped into bureaucracy or inconsistency.
Highlights:
Clearer processes, with phases presented upfront.
Ongoing communication and availability of someone to support the candidate throughout.
Supporting materials: study suggestions, detailed explanations about each phase, and structured feedback afterward.
Lowlights:
Interviewers with some training but limited experience.
Lack of adaptability during the interview. Some interviewers followed the script strictly but couldn’t adjust on the fly to the candidate’s seniority or direction of the conversation.
Occasional false highs: moments where enthusiasm or premature optimism created expectations of an imminent offer, only for the process to end abruptly without clear closure. Recruiting shouldn’t be about creating excitement, it should be about building alignment and trust.
Mid-size scale-ups: the weakest link
(300–999 employees, high growth)
Mid-size scale-ups were, in my experience, the weakest link, mostly due to inconsistency. Repeated questions, shifting timelines, and sometimes outright disrespect. Many of these companies are growing fast, but speed without structure often turns into chaos for candidates.
Lowlights:
Lack of clarity about the goal of each interview stage.
Interviewers clearly had little or no formal training.
Conversations were fluid, which can seem positive at first, but often missed essential evaluation points.
In several cases, interviewers seemed to be chosen mainly for their seniority or tenure within the company, but not necessarily for their interviewing skills. The result was visible: unstructured conversations, biased assessments, and a lack of depth in evaluating technical and leadership capabilities. When seniority replaces preparation, the process risks becoming a reflection of internal hierarchy rather than a genuine assessment of talent.
Startups and small organizations: authentic but unpolished
(~300 employees)
Overall, startups and small organizations were a genuinely good experience. The processes were more personal, often involving founders or long-time team members. While these interviews lacked polish and standardization, they made up for it with authenticity and transparency. You could feel the company’s culture in every exchange.
Highlights:
More intimate processes, focused on the human side, showing genuine care for the candidate.
Participation of founders or long-standing employees, bringing context and stories that help you understand the company’s reality.
Openness and full transparency about what matters most to the candidate.
Lowlights:
Unpredictable process length/unclear number of steps or interviews.
Time was not always respected, mostly because conversations lacked structure and naturally took longer than necessary.
What you can do with this information
Observing these patterns across more than twenty interviews made one thing clear: the quality of your hiring process says more about your organization than any mission statement or culture deck ever will.
But what can you actually do with that insight? Here are two perspectives, one for team leaders, and another for HR leaders, because improving interviews is everyone’s job.
If you’re a team leader
Team leaders are often the face of the company during interviews. Candidates will remember how you listened, how you structured the conversation, and how transparent you were.
Be intentional about structure. Don’t just show up and go in without intention. Know what you’re evaluating and why. If your company doesn’t provide a structured framework, create your own rubric — even a simple one helps ensure fairness.
Respect time and follow up. Candidates are giving you their focus and emotional energy. Always close the loop, even when the outcome is negative.
Prepare beyond the CV. Read the candidate’s background before the call and tailor your questions. Senior candidates, especially, can sense when you’re improvising too much.
Balance listening and probing. The goal isn’t to trap the candidate, it’s to learn how they think and how they’d fit your context.
Represent the culture you want to see. The way you interview sets the tone for how your future team will feel.
In short, interviewing isn’t a side task, it’s part of leadership. Treat it as such.
If you’re an HR or talent leader
For HR and talent leaders, interviews are the front door of the company’s brand. Every touchpoint, from scheduling to rejection, tells a story about who you are.
Audit your process. Map every stage, understand what each one is supposed to evaluate, and remove redundancy. If two rounds cover the same thing, that’s a signal of misalignment.
Train your interviewers. Don’t assume people “just know how” to interview. Provide guidance, calibration sessions, and feedback. Interviewing is a skill, it requires deliberate practice.
Ensure feedback and closure. Silence is not neutral, it’s a form of disrespect. Automate rejections if needed, but never leave candidates without closure.
Measure candidate experience. Gather feedback from candidates, not only those who got offers. It’s the most honest data you’ll get about your process.
Balance automation with humanity. Technology can streamline hiring, but no tool replaces empathy, clarity, and respect.
A mature hiring process isn’t about being perfect, it’s about being deliberate. Companies that care about how they interview show, in practice, that they care about people.
Culture in action
Looking back, the contrast between these experiences made one thing clear: interviewing is not just a hiring tool, it’s a cultural signal.
The way you design, structure, and run your hiring process communicates your culture more clearly than any “About Us” page or beautiful video in Linkedin. Respect, clarity, and adaptability aren’t luxuries, they are culture in action.
If companies want to attract strong talent, they need to treat interviews as more than a filter. They need to treat them as a mirror.