Every candidate now walks into a tech screening with AI in their pocket. Take-home tests get completed in minutes and coding assessments on their own no longer separate strong candidates from average ones.
Here’s what’s changed in our own hiring rounds.
From correct answers to reasoning
The focus has shifted from “can they produce a correct answer” to “can they explain their reasoning and hold up under follow-up questions.” A take-home test on its own doesn’t tell us much anymore.
The real test happens live
Synchronous interview sessions have become the real test: understanding how candidates translate what they’ve learned into real-world engineering scenarios and asking questions that reveal how someone actually thinks. Standard interview questions can easily be looked up online. A natural conversation is much harder to fake.
Tests are not the bottleneck, scale is
A live session with a senior engineer for every candidate isn’t sustainable, which is why early-stage technical evaluation matters more than ever.
Using AI is welcome, but understanding it is what counts
From what we’ve seen, using AI is completely acceptable. What matters is whether the candidate truly understands what they built and the tools they used, how they refined the output, and whether they can explain and adjust the code with confidence.
AI hasn’t made technical interviews easier. It’s made them more honest. The candidates who stand out aren’t the ones who avoid AI or lean on it blindly, they’re the ones who can explain, defend and build on what it gives them.
If you’re rethinking how your own technical evaluation works, we’d be glad to compare notes. Get in touch with our team.
Sanna Khaled
CEO
Whether you have a question, some feedback, or just want to explore what's possible, I'm always happy to chat.
Feel free to reach out at any time, no strings attached and no agenda needed.
Sometimes the best conversations start with a simple hello!
