A couple of folks asked me recently my opinion on how to do well in an Engineering Manager interview or what should they do to be more successful. I provided some inputs based on my experience of interviewing and hiring eng managers.

Also thought I’d write down notes as a way to help others who might find it useful.

It may not be you

One of the first things that I emphasized was that though there may be many things that they could improve to do well in interviews, most of the time, it is not them. The employer may just have had too many candidates who are very good fits for the position and might even have used ‘Optimal Stopping’ ¹. So, one should keep trying. The key thing to look out would be to not have the same approach everywhere since every company, and teams within these companies are different.

The General Structure

The structure is different in different companies. Some companies don’t hire for specific teams but for the company as a whole. In my past experience, I have done things in different ways, but mostly hired for specific teams, at least for specific orgs. It makes it easier for the recruiter to pitch to a candidate, IMHO. I generally give a paragraph to the recruiter and also explain what the job responsibilities are. As a hiring manager, I’ve always felt that I should talk to the person after the recruiter clears him/her. Ask a couple of situational questions and make time available to answer any questions. I feel like either the hiring manager or someone in leadership should talk to a person before bringing the person onsite. The time of the team is premium and should not be wasted in an onsite interview if there is a chance that the person may not work out.

The onsite interview itself could be varied. I would recommended doing at least 1 coding interview, 1 system design interview, 1 process/tools interview and a few (may be 3) behavioral/leadership interviews. If I didn’t have a chance to interview during telephone screen, I’ll make sure I’m one of the onsite interviewers. I’ll also make sure to include my manager or someone at the Sr. Dir or VP level and one of my peers if possible.

Even as I write this, I realize that it may not be scalable for big companies who might be looking for one size fits all or a consistent approach across the company. I’m visualizing a startup or a small company where every hire matters a lot.

Summarizing,

1. Telephone/Remote
   • Recruiter
   • Telephone Interview
   • Hiring Manager Interview (could be same as 1b)
2. Onsite/Video
   • Coding Interview
   • System Design Interview (2)
   • Leadership Interview (3)

The Overarching goal

I think the overarching goal for companies who are trying to hire a manager (including promoting within) is to see if they can find someone who would be effective in a continuous problem solving environment, someone who is brave to face challenges and mature enough to accept responsibilities. As Brene Brown says “I want to live in a world with braver, bolder leaders”. Here is a quote from “Daring Greatly” talking about the experience of leading -

“When I think about my personal experiences with leading over the past few years, the only endeavors that have required the same level of self-awareness and equally high-level “comms plans” are being married for twenty-four years and parenting. And that’s saying something. I completely underestimated the pull on my emotional bandwidth, the sheer determination it takes to stay calm under pressure, and the weight of continuous problem solving and decision making. Oh, yeah—and the sleepless nights.” ²

Different companies may follow different strategies to achieve this. A company like Amazon might give guidelines to ask questions to evaluate people based on its 14 leadership principles ³. Some may have similar frameworks or some may not. But the desire is the same.

Continuous ‘problem’ solving! What are the problems? They could be anything. The ‘problems’ could be related to a production incident that needs to be handled asap, a design decision to give inputs on which path is better to meet the objectives, asked to take up a project without clear or any requirements, performance issues of the system, people related issues, setting up of goals and vision for the team that is overdue, status reports to upper management, and so on. How to deal with multiple things by prioritizing the right things at the right time is the key to being effective. Of course, there are frameworks in place in most successful companies to make sure that employees are as effective as possible. But having a dialogue is a good way to gauge a person’s experience and ability.

Interview Questions

Now, coming to the questions. There is lot of material on coding questions (say Cracking the Coding Interview or hackerrank or leetcode) and System design (lot of videos on Youtube). As far as I’ve seen, people generally tend to do well in coding questions, moderately in system design and not so well in the leadership questions. The general thinking is, “I’m going to talk about my life, so what is there to prepare?” So they end up giving examples for scenarios which just pop up in their mind, mostly just focusing on the immediate past projects or talking in generic terms instead of giving concrete technologies or situations.

From a hiring manager’s perspective, though many people say that one should go into an interview with a mindset of no-hire and then be convinced otherwise, I have always done the opposite. I interview folks who I’m impressed by their resume/project work or references and go into the interview by saying “I’m going to hire this person unless he/she gives me a reason not to.” So, it makes all the more sense to visualize the interview at home, convince yourself that you can convince the other person and go into the interview confidently.

I’d categorize the questions in these 5 buckets to understand different facets of the person’s ability.

1. Interest - “Why are you interested in this job?”. There are many variants of this and the main objective is to find out - What makes the person qualified for the job? Why did the person get into management? How big of a team is the person comfortable managing? What kind of challenges does the person like, etc.

2. Hiring - “What do you look for when you hire someone?”. The discussion around this area would be to find out - Does the person have experience in hiring? Does the person hire for a fit or to raise the bar? How does the person rate candidates? How does the person convince someone to join their team, etc.

3. Technical Skill - “Tell me of a time when you recommended a technology but did not get accepted?”. The discussions around this would be the find out - Is the person abreast with technology that we’re using? Does the person have a good handle on technologies that they’ve mentioned in their resume? Can the person agree/disagree logically with architects and tech leads, etc.

4. Performance Management - “Tell me about a time when you had to deal with a low performer”. The question or related question will try to find out how the person does performance management. Has the person turned around a low performer?, has the person reward a high achiever? has the person laid off anyone? etc.

5. Conflict Resolution - “Tell me about a time when two groups/individuals in your team had a conflict and you were called to mediate”. In a fast paced environment, conflict is unavoidable. Sometimes within team members but many times with other team members who may have different KPIs/OKRs, or with other groups like PMs/PgMs or Architects. Has the person been in situations to resolve conflicts? Has the person done prioritization exercises on competing goals, etc.

I generally would ask a question on process, especially around CI/CD (continuous integration/continuous delivery) since I think that makes a huge difference in building and maintaining highly scalable software systems.

Regarding materials to read, I would suggest The Manager’s Path or other books mentioned in my article on Leadership - Essential Books.

After the interview

This section is for the interviewer rather than the interviewee. I think, taking notes is very important since it may so happen that multiple candidates are excellent and the panel might have to decide on just one person. In that case, it might be better to refer the good ones to a different team, hopefully without another round of interviews.

Also, the general practice in most companies is to tell the candidate that they couldn’t be selected and they can re-apply only after a year. That is totally unfair if the candidate actually did really well in the interview but preference was given to another person because that person was extraordinary in some unique way.

If none of the candidates do well after a series of onsite interviews, that is a red flag. It indicates an ineffective system where something in the pipeline is not proper. There may be a divergence between criteria used by recruiter vs telephone interviewer vs the onsite team.

Some companies give an option to the candidate to do reverse interviews. Once the candidate is cleared, he/she could interview teams within the company and choose which team to join. That is such a noble and lofty thing to do. I wish more companies embrace that.

Image Credit - https://pixy.org/5752172/