Refery blog
Interviewing
Exercises, scorecards, and the evidence a good interview produces.
An AI evaluation exercise for engineering candidates
Assess how candidates define acceptable AI behavior, choose test cases, inspect failures, and evaluate changes to an AI product.
Assessing asynchronous collaboration in a distributed team
Use a written handoff exercise to assess context, decisions, uncertainty, and escalation in distributed work.
How to assess collaboration without relying on culture fit
Use observable behaviors around disagreement, feedback, dependencies, and decision-making to assess collaboration in startup interviews.
More in interviewing
37 guidesHow to assess enterprise buyer fluency in a sales candidate
Test whether a sales candidate understands your buyer's work, stakeholders, constraints, and decision process beyond industry vocabulary.
How to assess technical fluency in a GTM hire
A practical workflow exercise for evaluating how commercial candidates understand systems, data, product limits, and technical collaboration.
How to Assess High Agency Without Turning It Into a Hiring Vibe
Translate high agency into job-related evidence about initiative, judgment, collaboration, and follow-through using a structured interview worksheet.
Assessing AI automation built by an operations candidate
Review an operations candidate's AI automation through workflow understanding, data boundaries, verification, failure handling, and maintenance.
How to assess product judgment in an engineering interview
A practical interview for finding engineers who can connect customer problems, implementation choices, and evidence after launch.
How to assess public engineering work alongside a resume
Review repositories, technical writing, and demos for individual contribution, reasoning, and maintainability without requiring public side projects.
How to assess whether a sales candidate created their own pipeline
Separate prospecting contribution from inherited demand, brand, and team support when hiring an early-stage seller.
Assessing technical change-management experience
Assess technical change leadership through migration planning, adoption, rollback, communication, and evidence that the change worked.
How to build an interview scorecard with behavioral anchors
Turn broad hiring criteria into observable behaviors, consistent questions, and evidence-based ratings for a startup interview process.
Comparing sales experience across different buying motions
Compare sales backgrounds through opportunity creation, buyer decisions, evaluation, commercial complexity, and delivery dependencies.
How to design a useful, bounded hiring work sample
Choose a realistic task, define its scope and scoring, and assess job-relevant work without asking candidates for a free business project.
Assessing current technical judgment in a leader who no longer codes daily
Evaluate a senior engineering leader's technical judgment through architecture tradeoffs, evidence quality, risk, and technical delegation.
An engineering project deep-dive interview for startup hiring
Use one project to assess an engineer's personal contribution, technical decisions, collaboration, and ownership after release.
How to assess reliability judgment in an engineering interview
A fictional incident exercise that tests investigation, containment, communication, and prevention without relying on memorized architecture answers.
How to translate unconventional experience into job evidence
Assess consulting, independent projects, internships, community work, and career transitions through the responsibilities they demonstrate.
How to assess firmware update and recovery engineering
Use a fictional interrupted firmware update to assess recovery, state transitions, verification, and device fleet judgment.
Delegating hiring decisions as a startup grows
Delegate hiring decisions with clear authority, evidence standards, budget boundaries, and escalation rules.
How to interpret sales quota attainment when hiring
Put a sales candidate's quota history in context: target definition, territory, pipeline origin, support, timing, and personal contribution.
Interviewing an engineering leader who manages managers
Assess a leader of engineering managers through delegation, manager development, cross-team decisions, and organizational diagnosis.
How to interview a former founder for a startup role
Assess a former founder's relevant execution, collaboration, and commitment to a defined role without relying on the founder title.
How to remove unnecessary interview stages
Map each interview to the evidence it supplies, identify repeated assessments, and remove stages that do not support a hiring decision.
Running a product-demo interview for a sales candidate
Evaluate a sales demo for buyer relevance, accurate claims, discovery, and useful next steps rather than presentation polish alone.
Assessing sales judgment from product-usage signals
Assess whether a seller can turn synthetic product-usage signals into a relevant conversation without treating activity as buying intent.
When to reconsider a previously declined candidate
Reopen a previously declined candidate only when the role, evidence, or original assessment has materially changed.
How to resolve disagreement in a hiring debrief
Separate conflicting evidence, different standards, and missing information so hiring teams can reach a clear, accountable decision.
Assessing a sales leader's coaching
Assess sales leadership through a fictional coaching conversation that turns observed behavior into a focused improvement plan.
How to run a sales discovery role-play in an interview
A bounded, fictional discovery exercise for assessing listening, problem diagnosis, qualification, and useful next steps in a sales hire.
Assessing forecast judgment without invented certainty
Use fictional opportunities to assess sales forecast judgment, evidence quality, uncertainty, and updates when facts change.
Assessing a commercial candidate's implementation handoff
Use a fictional won opportunity to assess whether a seller transfers commitments, uncertainties, stakeholders, and scope accurately to delivery.
Assessing negotiation judgment in a sales interview
Assess sales negotiation through understanding the buyer's request, trading options, respecting authority, and documenting agreements accurately.
Assessing a seller's territory-planning judgment
Use a fictional territory to assess account prioritization, research judgment, outreach sequencing, and learning.
How to run a structured reference check for a startup hire
Prepare relevant questions, confirm permission, understand the reference's context, and use specific observations to inform a hiring decision.
How to review inbound applications without missing relevant candidates
Build an application review process with job-related criteria, clear uncertainty handling, and a defined path for timely human review.
How to clarify a candidate's actual scope before interviews
Clarify employment context, individual contribution, decision authority, and project scope before making assumptions from a résumé.