Why your interview process is likely testing the wrong things

  • Hiring engineers who interview well but underperform is a common and costly problem, often stemming from a disconnect between interview performance and real-world job requirements.
  • Traditional interview methods, especially those over-relying on algorithmic puzzles, are poor predictors of on-the-job success and can filter out highly competent senior engineers.
  • The primary cause of hiring “false positives” is a process that prioritizes articulate self-presentation and theoretical problem-solving over demonstrated practical skill and collaborative ability.
  • In 2026, the pressure to hire quickly in a competitive market, coupled with the proliferation of interview coaching, makes it even harder to distinguish genuine seniority from polished performance.
  • To combat this, hiring managers must shift their focus from “can they pass the test?” to “can they do the job?” by implementing structured, practical, and collaborative vetting processes.
  • A robust decision framework should evaluate candidates on a combination of technical proficiency, problem-solving approach, collaborative skills, and project management acumen, not just their ability to answer brain teasers.

This article provides a practical framework for re-evaluating your hiring process to reduce false positives and build a stronger, more effective engineering team.

The High Cost of a Good First Impression: When Great Interviews Lead to Bad Hires

We’ve all been there. An engineering candidate walks in (or logs on), and from the first five minutes, you’re impressed. They’re articulate, confident, and sail through your technical questions. They whiteboard a flawless algorithm, talk eloquently about their past projects, and seem to be the perfect fit. You make the hire, feeling confident you’ve found a star. But three to six months later, the reality is painfully different. The star performer from the interview room is struggling to deliver. Their code is brittle, they’re slow to ramp up on the existing codebase, and they seem to be a net drain on the team’s productivity. 

You’ve just become the latest victim of a hiring false positive.

This phenomenon, where a candidate who excels in the interview process subsequently underperforms in their role, is one of the most persistent and expensive problems in tech hiring. The market is saturated with well-meaning but ultimately misguided advice. We’re told to look for “A-players,” to hire for “culture fit,” and to trust our gut. But these abstract notions often lead us astray. The common misconception is that a candidate’s ability to perform well in a high-pressure, artificial interview setting is a reliable indicator of their future job performance. It isn’t.

In 2026, this problem is more acute than ever. The demand for senior engineering talent, particularly in specialized fields like AI and data engineering, has never been higher. This creates immense pressure to hire quickly, often leading to shortcuts in the vetting process. Furthermore, the rise of sophisticated interview coaching services and the widespread availability of “canned” answers to common technical questions have made it easier for candidates to game the system. They come prepared with polished narratives and practiced solutions, making it increasingly difficult to assess their true capabilities. The result is a growing number of “interview artists” who can talk a great game but lack the depth of experience and practical skills to deliver real value.

How We See This Problem in Practice

At Correct Context, we specialize in building and scaling long-term engineering teams in Poland and the broader Central and Eastern European (CEE) region. In our work with both Fortune 500 innovation units and high-growth Series A+ startups, we’ve had a front-row seat to the challenges of hiring senior talent. What we consistently see is that the traditional interview process is fundamentally broken, especially when it comes to identifying true senior engineers. It’s a system that inadvertently rewards the wrong skills and creates a significant risk of bad engineering hires.

A mistake we see teams make time and again is confusing a candidate’s ability to perform under interview pressure with their ability to perform on the job. The interview has become a performance, a test of how well someone can solve abstract puzzles and tell a compelling story, rather than a genuine assessment of their engineering capabilities. We’ve seen candidates with beautifully curated GitHub profiles and impressive resumes who can talk a great game about system design but have never actually had to maintain or scale a complex system in a real-world production environment.

In our engagements, we often encounter clients who have been burned by these false positives. A typical scenario involves a company that has spent months searching for a senior engineer, finally finds a candidate who aces their LeetCode-style interviews, and brings them on board with high expectations. But the new hire struggles to contribute meaningfully. They might be a brilliant coder in isolation, but they lack the collaborative skills to work effectively within a team. They might be able to solve complex algorithmic problems but are lost when it comes to debugging a legacy system or making pragmatic architectural trade-offs. These are the senior engineer interview mistakes that lead to hiring failures, and they are far too common.

A Practical Framework for Vetting Senior Engineers

To move beyond the flawed traditional interview and identify genuinely effective senior engineers, you need to shift your evaluation criteria. Instead of asking, “Is this person smart?” you should be asking, “Can this person solve our problems, in our context, with our team?” This requires a more holistic and practical approach to vetting. We use a four-part framework to assess candidates, focusing on the skills that actually matter in a senior role.

1. Practical, Real-World Problem Solving

Senior engineers don’t spend their days solving algorithmic puzzles in isolation. They work on complex, messy, real-world problems. They debug legacy code, integrate with third-party APIs, and build features within the constraints of an existing system. Your interview process should reflect this reality.

The right candidate can take a real-world problem (e.g., a bug report, a feature request) and work through it systematically. The wrong one can only solve clean, well-defined algorithmic problems and struggles with ambiguity or incomplete information.

This approach favors engineers with hands-on experience building and maintaining real products, and detects candidates who have only practiced for interviews using puzzle-based platforms.

2. Collaborative Competence

Software engineering is a team sport. A senior engineer’s value is not just in the code they write, but in their ability to elevate the entire team. They need to be able to communicate clearly, provide constructive feedback, and work effectively with others.

You know you found the right person, when the candidate can clearly articulate their thought process, actively listens to feedback, and can constructively review code. When the candidate is a “lone wolf” who struggles to explain their ideas, is defensive about their code, or provides unhelpful feedback you know you should move on.

Testing collaborative competences you are able to find engineers who have experience working in collaborative, team-oriented environments. You also avoid brilliant but abrasive individuals who struggle with teamwork.

3. System-Level Thinking & Pragmatism

Senior engineers are expected to think beyond a single function or class. They need to understand how their work fits into the larger system and make pragmatic decisions that balance technical purity with business needs.

Look for the candidate who can discuss architectural trade-offs, consider the long-term maintenance costs of their decisions, and make pragmatic choices. Thank the one who is dogmatic about a particular technology or approach, and struggles to see the bigger picture.

This way you favor engineers with experience in system design, architecture, and long-term maintenance, rather than junior or mid-level engineers who have only worked on small, isolated features.

4. Ownership & Initiative

A great senior engineer doesn’t just wait to be told what to do. They proactively identify problems, suggest improvements, and take ownership of their work from start to finish. This is the difference between a coder and an engineer.

Move on with the candidate who shows curiosity about the business context, asks clarifying questions, and demonstrates a desire to understand the “why” behind the “what.” Resign when the candidate is passive, only answers the questions they are asked, and shows little interest in the broader context of their work.

With such an approach you select proactive, product-minded engineers who are invested in the success of the business, and avoid engineers who see their job as simply completing tickets.

When This Approach Is the Wrong Approach

This framework is not a silver bullet. It is a tool, and like any tool, it has its limitations. Adopting a more practical, in-depth vetting process requires a significant investment of time and resources, and it’s not the right fit for every company or every role. 

Here are some situations where this approach may not be the best choice:

  • When you need to hire at extreme scale and speed: If your primary goal is to hire hundreds of engineers in a very short period, a more lightweight, standardized process might be more practical. The in-depth, practical approach we advocate for is thorough, but it’s not fast. It’s designed to find the right hire, not just a hire.
  • For very junior roles: For entry-level positions where you are primarily hiring for potential and a willingness to learn, a rigorous, real-world problem-solving test may be overkill. In these cases, a focus on foundational knowledge and learning ability might be more appropriate.
  • If your team lacks the capacity to conduct in-depth interviews: A practical, collaborative interview process requires a significant time commitment from your existing senior engineers. If your team is already stretched thin, pulling them away from their work to conduct lengthy interviews can be counterproductive. In this scenario, you might consider a third-party technical validation service or a more streamlined internal process.
  • When the role is highly specialized and theoretical: For certain R&D or highly specialized roles, a deep understanding of theory and algorithms may be more important than hands-on experience with a particular tech stack. In these cases, a more traditional, academic-style interview might be more appropriate.

It’s also important to recognize that no process can completely eliminate the risk of a bad hire. The goal is to significantly reduce the probability of false positives, not to achieve hiring perfection. The key is to be intentional about your process and to choose the approach that best aligns with your specific needs and constraints.

Practical Next Steps: A Checklist for De-Risking Your Hiring Process

Moving from theory to practice can be challenging. Here is a simple checklist to help you start re-evaluating and improving your engineering hiring process today.

Internally Assess Your Current Process:

  • Review your last 5-10 hires: How many were successful? How many were false positives? What were the common characteristics of each group?
  • Analyze your interview-to-hire ratio: A very low ratio might indicate your process is too aggressive and is filtering out good candidates (false negatives).
  • Survey your engineering team: Do they feel the current interview process accurately assesses the skills needed for the job? What are their biggest frustrations with the process?

Gather the Right Data:

  • Define what “good” looks like for each role: Create a clear, concise document that outlines the key technical and behavioral competencies required for success.
  • Build a library of real-world problems: Instead of relying on off-the-shelf brain teasers, create a set of interview questions based on actual challenges your team has faced.
  • Implement a structured scorecard: Ensure every interviewer is using the same criteria to evaluate candidates, and that those criteria are directly tied to the job requirements.

Questions to Ask Vendors or Partners (like Correct Context):

  • What is your process for vetting candidates beyond a resume and a standard technical screen?
  • How do you assess collaborative and communication skills, not just technical ability?
  • Can you provide a real-world, hands-on technical challenge that simulates our actual work environment?
  • What is your experience with the specific tech stack and seniority level we are hiring for?

Most Hiring Failures Are Preventable

The cost of a bad hire isn’t just financial; it’s a drain on your team’s morale, your product’s momentum, and your own time. By shifting your focus from interview performance to validating real-world skills, you can dramatically reduce the risk of hiring false positives. The framework and checklist in this article are designed to be a starting point for that shift.

To help you put these ideas into practice, we’ve created and mastered a framework for hiring engineers and engineering teams. Unleash your potential with the right hiring – today.

 

 

Grow your Core Tech Teams with us!

 

 

 

Further reading

Table of content
Related articles