Interviews, not exams: how I changed the way we hire infrastructure engineers

I manage a twelve-person infrastructure team and I'm dyslexic. I got through my own interviews years ago on luck and verbal compensation, and then found myself running the same broken process on other people: timed written scenarios, whiteboard diagrams under observation, 'walk me through this 6-page architecture doc you've had for ten minutes'.

We kept rejecting candidates who later thrived elsewhere, and hiring confident readers who couldn't troubleshoot. The process measured reading speed, handwriting confidence and calm under surveillance - none of which is the job. And candidates who asked for accommodations effectively outed themselves before day one.

We rebuilt the loop around the actual work:

• A hands-on lab instead of a whiteboard. Here's a broken environment, here's a terminal, find and fix it. Talk aloud if it helps, or don't.
• Materials sent 48 hours ahead to every candidate, no request needed. If the job lets you prepare, the interview should.
• Choice of format for the design discussion: diagram it, talk it, or write it.
• Structured scoring on outcomes - did they find the fault, was the fix sound - not on presentation style.

If you're a candidate: ask 'can I demonstrate instead of describe?' - good teams say yes. If you're a hiring manager: your written exercise is probably filtering for the wrong trait, and universal accommodations (materials ahead, format choice) cost nothing and de-stigmatise everything. Our retention in year one went up, not down.