About speaker

Dennis Nerush

Elementor

Director of AI

Dennis Nerush is the Director of AI at Elementor, where he leads the company’s AI strategy and guides teams in integrating GenAI technologies that enhance productivity while preserving human creativity and accountability.

With over 15 years of experience as a developer, manager, director, and adviser across multiple tech companies and startups, Dennis has dedicated his career to building people-first cultures rooted in continuous learning, curiosity, and growth. He believes that when individuals thrive, teams and businesses flourish, a philosophy that has guided him in founding dozens of teams and mentoring over 100 managers.

Dennis is a seasoned public speaker and writer who shares his insights on AI integration, leadership, and team performance at international conferences. He’s passionate about helping leaders develop the skills and confidence to excel in a world where human leadership and AI collaboration go hand in hand.

In his free time, Dennis loves cooking and spending time with his kids. His main goal is to help people reach the next level.

Talk details

Talk
Engineering leadership Intermediate

Most Engineering Interviews Are Broken: Here’s What Actually Matters Now

Dennis Nerush
Dennis Nerush Director of AI at Elementor
AI AI in HR Hiring Interviews

AI has fundamentally changed how engineers work, but most hiring processes haven’t changed at all.

Coding assistants can generate solutions in seconds. System design answers can be refined with prompts. Candidates walk into interviews with powerful AI tools at their side. Yet many companies are still evaluating engineers as if AI didn’t exist.

So how do you actually assess engineering ability in this new reality?

After interviewing hundreds of engineers at Elementor, I redesigned my hiring process for the AI era. Instead of trying to prevent candidates from using AI, I changed what we evaluate. Today we test how engineers think, how they collaborate with AI, and how they apply judgment when AI-generated solutions are incomplete, incorrect, or misleading.

In this talk, I’ll share what changed in our hiring process and what actually works in practice:
how we evaluate coding ability when AI is involved, which system design questions reveal AI orchestration skills, and what behavioral signals distinguish high-impact engineers from candidates who rely on AI to mask gaps.

Whether you’re hiring engineers, preparing for interviews, or leading an engineering organization, you’ll leave with a practical framework for evaluating engineering talent in the AI era.

Read more →

Data

Leadership

Product

AI/ML

UX/UI

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