I would never be able to have interviews with them all in a single day (the constraint was me and the two founders had to travel to another city to get all interviews done in one day and I was asked if I can organize it). So what I, in my naivety, did was to invite them all to single room for an exam-like event and gave them programming tasks in Scratch, if I remember well.
Once we had results, we took 10 with best scores and had half an hour short interview with each one, after which we debated and selected 6.
Yes. That did happen. I even felt quite proud that I was so efficient. I still feel dirty. Have a laugh.
Only after I came back home I have realized what happened and that these people are going to be backbone of the company for years to come. I have realized the founders, coming from a larger company have absolutely no ability to form a team. Because they have always been joining an existing team they have always looked at the team as a collection of random people and decided that it doesn't make much difference how the people are selected as long as they have a team of people who can demonstrate they can program.
Once we had results, we took 10 with best scores and had half an hour short interview with each one, after which we debated and selected 6.
Yes. That did happen. I even felt quite proud that I was so efficient. I still feel dirty. Have a laugh.
Only after I came back home I have realized what happened and that these people are going to be backbone of the company for years to come. I have realized the founders, coming from a larger company have absolutely no ability to form a team. Because they have always been joining an existing team they have always looked at the team as a collection of random people and decided that it doesn't make much difference how the people are selected as long as they have a team of people who can demonstrate they can program.