At Articulate, we’re no strangers to disrupting the status quo. We’ve been developing e-learning apps and tools as a fully remote company for over 15 years. Working remotely requires thinking outside the box from time to time. Naturally, we’ve developed unique approaches to many traditional business processes.

Our interview process on the platform engineering team is just one example. How it starts is not much different from what most companies do: post a work-from-home job posting online and wait for applications to come in. That’s about as “normal” as it gets in the Articulate interview process. The next steps take on a life of their own.

Candidate selection is a global effort

Meeting people across time zones is nothing new for us. Just look at our platform engineering team. The 13 of us are spread across the US, Canada, India, New Zealand, and the Netherlands. And we use this broad time zone distribution to our advantage by running asynchronous, fully distributed team interviews in Slack.

Our goals for Slack interviews are:

• Give everyone on the team a voice in hiring
• Preserving the best parts of our culture
• Find amazing talent, no matter where they live

To achieve these goals, we rely heavily on asynchronous communication. We’re always thinking about how to work together effectively when we’re not in the same physical space. Here are the steps that lead to a Slack team interview.

One foot in the door

After the hiring manager reviews the candidates, we identify the candidates we will send in for a phone interview. The hiring manager conducts the initial phone interview with the candidate (who we’ll call “Robin” in this example) and builds an understanding of their technical depth, breadth, career trajectory, interests, personality, and more. 

Now that the phone interview is scheduled, next stop: interviewing with the Slack team! We’re continually evolving our processes, but here’s how we approached interviewing the Slack team today. (Feel free to use this as a starting guide for conducting a Slack interview for your team.)

Welcome to Slack!

Before Robin starts interviewing the Slack team, we have some work to do behind the scenes. It looks like this:

Create two private Slack channels: #platform-robin and #backchannel-robin .

The day before the team interview begins, invite the team to #backchannel-robin . Here, we share Robin’s resume, LinkedIn profile, and other relevant content. This channel is for coordinating questions, scheduling backstage, and generally discussing Robin’s technical skills.

On the interview start date, we invited Robin to Slack as a single-channel guest with an automatic account expiration date. (I advise against multi-channel guest because the single channel is free and it will save you the embarrassment of inviting the candidate to a channel they shouldn't have seen.)

Now that we’ve done our part to get the Slack team interview rolling, we sent a follow-up email to Robin (in case their spam filter swallowed the invite) with a note to ping us on Slack when they join the # platform-robin channel.

Once Robin joins, we reiterate the format and set expectations. We’ve found that repetition is helpful in reinforcing and establishing psychological safety that it’s not necessary to talk to us all the time. That way, Robin won’t be too eager to answer a question right away. 

Next, I invite the rest of the platform engineering team to #platform-robin , and if they’re new to this approach, I remind them (at #backchannel-robin ) to welcome Robin. To ensure that communication flows smoothly, we keep a list of suggested topics and questions handy for when things need a little nudge. Example topics include systems thinking, software engineering, building for resilience, and emotional intelligence.

Sometimes there are questions a candidate wouldn’t want to ask in front of the entire team. We make it safe for them by being explicit about how to contact the hiring manager if needed.

Looking at the big picture, we spend the first day getting to know the candidate as a person. At this point, we’re looking for someone we get along with. Days 2 and 3, we cover technical issues and job-related topics. We look for curiosity and excitement about the work, and appropriate levels of technical depth and experience for the role.

And before we know it, it’s the end of day three! We DM Robin to remind them that it’s the last day of the interview and that the account will automatically expire that evening. We also remind the #backchannel-robin team that Robin’s Slack account will automatically close at the end of the day.

Post-Slack Interview

The day after the Slack team interview ends, we ping the team at #backchannel-robin . We start a Slack discussion or schedule a video call. The team’s interactions with Robin will largely drive their opinions. We also address the following questions:

• Will the candidate be a “values adjustment”?
• Is this someone we would like to work with every day?
• Do they match the priorities of our team and the company?
• Do they bring a new perspective?
• Would it be painful for us not to hire this individual?

If someone on the team has a “no hire” position, we immediately jump on video chat and investigate those concerns as a team. We want to be thorough and uncover any issues or unconscious biases in our hiring process.

Sometimes there’s a simple misunderstanding or lack of context, so talking it through with the team can help uncover the underlying issue. Other times, we need to follow up with the candidate to clarify some concerns. If we can’t alleviate the concerns as a team or with follow-up, we’ll let the candidate know that we don’t think they’re a good fit at this time.

The final stretch

The final steps vary depending on the requirements of a position. If Robin meets all of our requirements, we’ll discuss benefits, salary, and more. Once these details are agreed upon, we’ll make an official offer.

Here's what we learned

When you go against the norm, there are lessons to be learned. Here are some of the key takeaways from our experience interviewing the Slack team so far:

1. Be clear with candidates about expectations; communicate what will happen in the Slack interview. This interview approach is unusual, so we strive to reduce ambiguity as much as possible.
2. Don’t be afraid to end the interview early if it’s not going well. We’ve had cases where the team has raised concerns in the backchannel, explored with clarifying questions, and still felt there were significant red flags. We always gather multiple opinions to check our biases, but if we’re not comfortable working with a candidate from the start, we’ll thank them for their time, explain that we don’t think there’s a good fit at this time, and close the interview in Slack. Doing this as early as possible respects the candidate’s time and your team’s.
3. Build flexibility into the process for time zones that are too far apart. We’ve found that when talking to candidates in Asia or Australia, our team needs more flexible timing during the interview process. The majority of our team is based in North America, so there’s little overlap in working hours with candidates in those time zones. To combat the feeling that we’ve barely scratched the surface, we’ve extended the Slack team interview to four days.

Summary

This interview style is time-consuming. If you’re not sure if this approach will work for you, try it internally first with a test interview. It requires buy-in from your team and management, but the benefits are significant. You give everyone on your team a voice in the hiring process, preserve the best parts of your culture, and find amazing talent no matter where they live. Plus, interviewing candidates in a medium like Slack, where both parties are likely already comfortable, helps put everyone at ease and allows the conversation to flow more naturally.

What started as a curious hiring experiment has become an integral part of the platform’s engineering team’s interview process. So far, it seems to be working well, and despite a few hiccups, we’ve received overwhelmingly positive feedback from candidates about the process.

Content originally published in: Articulate Blog

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