AssessDev Blog

In this blog, you will find simple and actionable tips and tricks for conducting tech interviews, designing and preparing the tech interview process and developing a great candidate experience. Follow us on LinkedIn for daily interviewing best practices.

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Kat has prepared 500+ interviews, and has conducted 750+ technical interviews herself. She leads technical interviewer trainings for hiring manager and in-house tech team members who will be the ones interviewing their future colleagues. She was the CTO of 2 startups after having a decade-long career in Machine Learning and software engineering.

Kat Stam

Kat Stam LinkedIn

Blog Author and Principal Tech Interviewer

A Hiring manager failing a tech candidate during an virtual interview while being evaluated for a software engineering position despite strong technical skills.

The Brilliant Candidate Nobody Wanted to Hire: When Interview Performance and Job Performance Collide

**Excerpt:** A candidate arrives late, ignores interview preparation instructions, struggles with their technical setup, and leaves a poor first impression. Most hiring managers would reject them immediately. But what if they are the most qualified candidate for the role? Discover how leading companies separate interview performance from job performance, avoid costly hiring mistakes, and identify when a bad interview should not outweigh exceptional technical skills. Learn the key factors every recruiter and hiring manager should consider before rejecting a great engineer after a poor interview experience.

Posted by Kat Stam | May 20, 2026
Full-stack developers switching between coding work and technical interviews in a software engineering team

The Hidden Cost of Engineering Interviews: How Hiring Slows Down Product Delivery

Every engineering interview has a hidden cost most companies ignore: lost developer productivity. As engineers are pulled away from building to interview candidates, product delivery slows down, context switching increases, and teams quietly lose momentum.

Posted by Kat Stam | March 4, 2026
Recruitment team reviewing hiring strategy and candidate pipelines before the new year, preparing for Q1 recruitment planning and workforce growth.
practical guide

5 Critical Recruitment Mistakes Companies Must Fix Before January Hiring Begins

As the year comes to a close, recruitment agencies and hiring companies have a critical opportunity to improve their hiring processes before Q1 demand accelerates. Discover 5 actionable recruitment strategies to reduce hiring delays, improve candidate quality, strengthen interview processes, and prepare for a more successful hiring year ahead.

Posted by Kat Stam | December 1, 2025
Video Interview Essentials for Technical Interviewers
advice

Video Interview Essentials

Here is a useful list of things to do when preparing for a video interview. This piece applies both to the interviewers, who want to act professionally, and to the candidates, who want to make a great first impression.

Posted by Kat Stam | September 3, 2024
Write an effective Job Description

Get the Job Description Right to Hire Top Tech Talent

Hiring the best top tech talent starts even before the interviews have began. It starts with writing a great and effective job description which lists the required and desired tech and soft skills a successful candidate should have.

Posted by Kat Stam | August 29, 2024
How to design the ultimate live coding task for tech interviews

Design a live coding task in 4 simple steps

Live coding tasks during technical interviews should neither be too long, nor too complicated. Here is a list of simple steps to follow to design the ultimate tech challenge - one which will help you uncover the skills you your best candidates.

Posted by Kat Stam | August 22, 2024
save 25 man hours at the tech interview stage

How to save 25 man-hours at tech interview stage

When hiring, companies prefer to keep the technical interviewing in-house. This means that they select developers from their teams to interview the applicants who have reached to the tech assessment stage. Here is the hidden cost of that in terms of man hours.

Posted by Kat Stam | July 10, 2024
Best Practices for Tech Interviewers

Best Practices for Tech Interviewers

Here is a list of best practices our team of professional tech interviewers compiled after conducting more than 1000+ technical assessments. These practices are useful to both technical and non-technical professionals.

Posted by Kat Stam | June 25, 2024