technical interview candidates

A job candidate is questioning why HR staff ask technical screening questions, describing an interview that opened with an email-security question — how to tell if a message is fake — posed by an HR employee rather than an engineer. The account has prompted discussion about whether non-technical recruiters can fairly evaluate technical answers, and whether companies should route screening through hiring managers or security staff instead.

A developer describes sitting a coding interview with an AI assistant present, but under tight restrictions: it could not help debug or assist with implementation, the two tasks at the heart of the test. The candidate was handed an unfamiliar codebase and asked to fix bugs within a time limit. They say the rules forced an adjustment, since they regularly rely on AI in day-to-day coding, highlighting how companies are now designing interview tasks that accommodate AI use while still probing real ability.