That’s a great question and it touches on something many hiring teams are starting to question: Should interviews still follow a strict schedule, or can we allow them to flow more naturally?
Let’s start with a general truth: interview formats should adapt to the level of the role, the nature of the skills you’re assessing, and the format of the conversation. There’s no universal formula. For senior roles, especially in leadership, architecture, or security-critical environments, you need to strike a balance between depth and focus.
In junior interviews, we assess potential, coachability, and basic logic. We expect to invest in training. Questions lean toward fundamental problem-solving or practical exercises that show how someone thinks.
But when we talk about senior engineers or CTO-level candidates, the expectations are different. These professionals are expected to own their decisions; technical, architectural, and even strategic. The conversation becomes less about "do you know X" and more about how you make decisions, how you assess trade-offs, and how you align tech with business.
That said, length isn’t the real issue - it’s structure. A 45–60 minute window is often enough for an initial interview. But if the discussion flows well, and you’re digging into real scenarios, going longer is fine, as long as the candidate stays engaged. But once you push past 75–80 minutes, especially in remote settings, energy and focus start to drop. You risk losing the human connection.
But here’s where I’d offer a more pragmatic view: you don’t need to stick to a fixed time at all. The first few minutes will often tell you everything. If it’s clear the candidate isn’t aligned, perhaps they’re missing key fundamentals or struggle with core concepts, there’s no need to stretch the session. Respect their time and your own. You can bring it to a close after 10–15 minutes without making it uncomfortable.
I often compare this to oral exams at university. Some professors would keep raising the difficulty until you reached your personal limit, not because you were expected to answer everything, but because they wanted to find your ceiling. You might already have passed with full marks by that point. But they were testing depth, not just correctness. This is a powerful model for senior interviews.
If a candidate struggles with the basics, you can stop early. But if they fly through the essentials, you can continue, go beyond the mandatory requirements, introduce a challenge, and observe how they navigate complexity. Ask how they would handle a difficult trade-off. Present a grey area. See how they think under light pressure. This doesn't just assess skill, it reveals maturity, composure, and professional range.
This approach becomes especially useful when you’re interviewing multiple strong candidates. Everyone might pass the basics. But pushing them a little further helps you understand who’s merely qualified, and who stands out.
It’s also important to consider the nature of your questions. A test with straightforward, multiple-choice items can be completed in minutes if the candidate knows the answers. If not, no amount of extra time will help them figure it out. On the other hand, if your questions are open-ended or problem-based, the way candidates reason, prioritise, or even express doubt becomes part of the evaluation.
How you moderate the interview matters as much as the questions themselves. Some candidates may take five minutes to answer a complex question, others may go on for twenty, exploring the problem as they think aloud. In those moments, you need to decide: do you stop them once you've heard what you needed, or do you let them speak and risk derailing the flow?
In short:
✔️ Focus more on structure than time.
✔️ Be clear about what you’re evaluating and stop if it’s not a match.
✔️ Use follow-up questions to probe further when a candidate performs well.
✔️ Don’t be afraid to let strong candidates shine, test their limits in a constructive way.
✔️ Most importantly, design the process around the role, not around a timer.
