In the summer before my senior year at college, I did a 3 month internship at a software development company. The interview for the internship was very soft, p

In the summer before my senior year at college, I did a 3 month internship at a software development company. The interview for the internship was very soft, partly because it was only an internship, and also because I knew someone at the company who helped me get the position. After I graduated, I applied for a full-time position there and have been there for 10 years. The interview process for the full-time position was also fairly soft and non-technical because I was hiring into a team that I worked with during my internship. I like to describe it as a 3-month long interview process. Not only did the company get to know me and what I was capable of, but I got to know the company and its people (in order to make a decision about if it was some place that I would like to work). Surely this isn't scalable (internship are fairly rare, and generally are not available to anyone except students or recent grads), but the whole internship process worked out very well for me. It allowed me to bypass the traditional tech interview, which is something I feel very fortunate about.