Let’s be real, you don’t need more than 1 hour for a proper technical interview.
The way most companies are doing interviews right now? It’s embarrassing.
They completely miss the point of what makes someone a good software developer. And don’t even get me started on how out of touch they are with the current state of AI.
Want to run an effective interview? Want to find out if someone not only has experience but also knows how to use modern AI tools to boost their work?
Here’s the process. One hour. That’s all it takes.
🔹 First 20 minutes: Let’s talk past projects
Ask about the candidate’s previous experience. Dive a bit into the projects they mention. This alone tells you a lot, what kind of challenges they’ve faced, how deep their experience goes, and how they think about solving problems.
Important: before the interview, send them a starter project (depending on the stack) so they can clone it and have it ready.
🔹 Next 40 minutes: Live coding, but make it real
Now here’s where it gets interesting, build a feature live, inside that starter repo.
But with a twist, let them use AI tools, VS Code with Copilot, Cursor, Windsurf, ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, whatever they want.
Autocomplete, AI prompts, agent mode, copy paste, search on the internet, it’s all fair game.
What matters isn’t if they use AI, it’s how they use it.
As they build:
- Ask about the code the AI generates, go deep on the candidate explanations about it.
- Look at the way they prompt. Are they treating the AI like magic, or are they in control? Do they give clear instructions about architecture, refactors, patterns?
You’ll quickly spot the difference between someone who leads with intention and someone who’s just hoping the AI does it all for them.
So what’s the catch?
Simple, this kind of interview only works if the interviewer actually knows the craft.
That means real technical experience, and being up to speed with modern AI workflows. If you don’t know how these tools work, you won’t know what to look for.
Conclusion
Cut the nonsense, skip memorized LeetCode problems that won't have any impact on the actual job. Focus on what matters, real world experience and modern tools.
That’s it.
Yes, it really is that simple.
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