What we usually do is narrow the field to about two or three final candidates. Then we’ll fly each in for a day. Since we already know we like their skills (otherwise they wouldn’t have gotten this far), the in-person meeting is to determine if we like the “person.” The meeting is informal—usually over lunch. And since we have a large part of the team in Chicago, we often let the candidate go out with their potential team coworkers instead of their manager. The prospective hire is going to be working with their teammates a lot more than their manager, so it’s important that the team get a good
...more
