Job Trials Over Interviews

Evaluate candidates through actual work, not interview performance—put them in the race car

Farhan Thawar
How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture

Job Trials Over Interviews

"If I told you, 'Hey, I want to go hire the best race car driver,' there's not really that many questions you could ask them except for put them in the car." - Farhan Thawar

What It Is

Interviews are not a good predictor of job performance. Everyone knows this—some people interview well but underperform, others interview poorly but excel. The solution: put people in the actual job and evaluate real work product.

Farhan's approach is radical: at his startup, he almost didn't interview anybody. He just said "come in and work." This led to higher early attrition (~20% before 90 days) but near-zero attrition after 90 days (<1%), because both parties knew exactly what they were getting.

How It Works

Why Interviews Fail:

  • Optimized for interview performance, not job performance
  • Can't assess cultural fit from hypothetical scenarios
  • Resume bias (PhD vs. self-taught) doesn't predict success
  • Hours of interviews << months of actual work

The Job Trial Model:

  • Bring candidates in to do actual work
  • Use the first 30-60-90 days as the real evaluation
  • Set explicit expectations that this period is mutual assessment
  • Be willing to part ways quickly if it's not a fit

The Real Example: At Farhan's startup, he hired two people for ML:

  • Person A: PhD, taught at university, recommended by an employee
  • Person B: Guy from a coffee shop, never had a software job

Person A was let go within weeks. Person B is still at Shopify years later and is a phenomenal engineer. The difference was only visible through actual work, not credentials.

How to Apply It

  1. Internship programs at scale - Shopify hires 1,000 interns/year. Four months of real work is the best possible "interview." Top performers convert to full-time.

  2. Contract-to-hire - Start people on contracts where both parties can evaluate fit before full commitment.

  3. Pair programming trials - Have candidates pair program with the team for a day. You'll learn more than from whiteboard problems.

  4. Set expectations explicitly - "We'll both spend the first 90 days evaluating fit. That's good for you and good for us."

  5. Survey new hires early - Shopify sends a Slack survey: "How happy are you with the person you hired?" This creates feedback loops.

The Intern Program as Interview

Shopify's perspective on internships:

  • Not community service—interns are genuinely useful
  • They bring different perspectives (grew up with AI, different shopping habits)
  • Four months of real work is the ultimate evaluation
  • Interns who pair program are always more intense than full-timers
  • Some become full-time, some take the Shopify imprint elsewhere

Both outcomes are wins.

What Changes With Volume

At Shopify's scale, you can't do pure job trials for everyone. But you can:

  • Make the interview process as close to real work as possible
  • Use the 30-60-90 days intentionally as extended evaluation
  • Run massive intern programs as your primary hiring funnel
  • Be transparent that early days are mutual assessment

Source

  • Guest: Farhan Thawar
  • Episode: "How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture"
  • Key Discussion: (01:03:28 - 01:10:03) - Job trials, intern programs, and avoiding resume bias
  • YouTube: Watch on YouTube

Related Frameworks

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