Interview feedback and the Thumb-o-meter™

The typical timeline of interviews at Apple was: (1) a candidate was interviewed by one or two employees at a time, and (2) feedback was discussed afterwards in a conference room or sent to manager and/or recruiter via email. Each approach has its own benefits and drawbacks.

In-person feedback

In my earlier days at Apple, feedback was almost always provided (in person) in a post-interview feedback session in a conference room. Typically, we’d take turns talking about the candidate, mentioning the topics we covered and how they did.

Benefits:

This provided a nice back-and-forth between interviewers as we tried to build a complete picture of the candidate. Everyone would know what happened in every interview session. This would trigger further questions and answers between the interviewers. This was also an opportunity to try to reconcile differing opinions about various qualities of the candidate. One of the biggest benefits of these sessions was the hiring decision was made right there. E…