[earpwald]

I do interviews at a decent sized company, but our office is really only 15-20 people. Our process is a bit lacking as we generally do 2 rounds of discussions (1 hour or less each) which has a focus on technical and soft-skill questions.

Its an ok process, but I personally would like to change one of the sessions to be an interactive dev... give a codebase ahead of time, nothing crazy and then get them to drive a solution, be the partner and then also work through a bug. Nothing complicated, I want to see their thought process and how they work as a team. Obviously google etc should be available.

In terms of being able to compete with larger companies, thats not always the case. Maybe not in salary, but thats only part of a job. Culture, perks, and the project itself can all be draws to bring in great devs.

I'd add that my worst ever interview was a coding one, similar to what I described, but the difference was that there were 3 people sat opposite me just watching me, no talking, no chat or fun, nothing. Dont be those people!