How to Replace LeetCode with Something That Actually Works April 4, 2025 by Eduardo Bellani

Recently there has been an interest in cheating(?) leetcode style interviews(Yang 2025). These articles highlight a longstanding issue in tech recruiting: puzzle-style assessments have little to no correlation with actual job performance(Konnikova 2013; McAllister 2013), and leetcode is nothing but algorithmic puzzles. This makes them a poor predictor of job performance. What leetcode does predict seems to be success at leetcode style interviews(Mroczka 2024). Go figure.

If you are in power to stop doing these silly things and reach for something with actual evidence of working, here is a blueprint for performing a structured interview with a focus on programmers, but that can be adapted for other positions quite easily.

A core part of a structured interview is to determine the competencies to be assessed by the interview(of Personnel Management 2008). According to (Hogan and Warrenfeltz 2003), the skills and behaviors found in virtually every organizational competency model fall into one of four major domains, and that they form a natural, overlapping developmental sequence, with the latter skills (e.g., Leadership Skills) depending on the appropriate development of the earlier skills (e.g., Intrapersonal Skills).

Intrapersonal

These skills develop early in childhood and have important consequences for career development in adulthood. Core components include core-self esteem, resiliency, and self-control. Intrapersonal skills form the foundation on which careers develop.

Questions

• Can you describe a situation in your life where your capacity of planning made a difference?
• Can you describe a situation in your life where your capacity for discipline made a difference?
• Can you describe a situation in your life where your capacity for flexibility in thinking made a difference?

Answers

1

Candidate demonstrated very little conscientiousness and emotional stability in the answers. Apathetic, unstable, resented.

5

Candidate demonstrated a lot of conscientiousness. Resiliency, intelligent risk taking, disciplined effort.

Interpersonal

These skills concern building and sustaining relationships. Interpersonal skills can be described in terms of three components:

1. an ability to put oneself in the position of another person,
2. an ability to accurately perceive and anticipate other’s expectations, and
3. an ability to incorporate information about the other person’s expectations into subsequent behavior.

Questions

• Can you describe a situation in your life where your capacity for building relationships with others made a difference?
• Can you describe a situation in your life where your capacity for teamwork made a difference?
• Can you describe a situation in your life where your capacity for communicating made a difference?

Answers

1

Candidate demonstrated very little capacity for working with others. Imprecise language, bad intonation, weird social cues.

5

Candidate demonstrated a lot of capacity to integrate and to work with others. Lots of agreeable, extroverted behaviors.

Technical

These skills differ from Intrapersonal and Interpersonal skills in that they are

1. the last to develop,
2. the easiest to teach,
3. the most cognitive, and
4. the least dependent upon dealing with other people.

Technical skills involve comparing, compiling, innovating, computing, analyzing, coordinating, synthesizing, and so on.

Questions

• Can you describe your technical progress in your career?
• What’s your favorite programming language and why do you like it the most?
• Can you describe how you make technical judgements when facing scarce resources (time, etc)?
• Can you describe what is a good software development environment?

Answers

1

Candidate demonstrated very little awareness of the Computer Science field. Only the obvious knowledge, and very shallow at that.

5

Candidate demonstrated amazing grasp of the field, quoting different areas and integrating them into a coherent whole.

Business

These skills can be understood in terms of components that depend upon intrapersonal, interpersonal, and technical skills. The point here is to understand if the person is capable of using his whole tool set to generate value for others.

For a leader these entail an ability to recruit talented people to join the team. Second, one must be able to retain talent once it has been recruited. Third, one must be able to motivate a team. Fourth, effective leaders are able to develop and promote a vision for the team. Finally, leadership skill involves being persistent and hard to discourage.

For a follower, the persistance component is shared, alongside initiative.

Questions

• Can you describe a situation where you generated value for others?
• Can you describe a situation where your initiative made a difference?
• Can you describe how your technical knowledge might help a business like ours?
• Can you describe what is a good software development team?
• Can you describe what is your ideal technical vision?

Answers

1

Candidate demonstrated very little capacity for integrating his knowledge. Confused technical vision, murky connections.

5

Candidate demonstrated a great grasp on how to use his whole knowledge to help the business and his team.

Conclusion:

Tech hiring is long overdue for an evidence-based overhaul. Structured interviews rooted in validated competencies not only predict performance better — they respect candidates’ time and intelligence. If you’re hiring engineers, skip the puzzles and build a process that actually works.

References