Questions marked as (HM) are best suited for the hiring manager.
- Why are you working at this company? What motivates you to stay?
- What’s something that if your team/org achieves this year, the entire company/leadership would notice?
- If you had a magic wand, what’s one thing you’d change about the company?
- (HM) If you had filled this role 2 months ago, what would they be doing now?
- (HM) How many people have left your team in the past 6 months?
- How do you do planning? How often does it happen? How often does it get revised?
- What’s the weakest form of communication in your team/company? Slack? Meetings? Memos?
- (HM) How many people have left this team in the last 6 months? Can I speak to one of them?
- (HM) What happens when we disagree even after an hour of good conversation?
- (HM) Tell me about a time you failed to collaborate with a report or a manager.
- When was the last time you had to learn something new? How did you schedule/budget for it with your manager?
- Do you know anyone who you think should’ve been promoted but wasn’t? Why?
- What happens when an engineer wants opportunities that their team doesn’t have?
- (HM) What does it look like when you have healthy feedback channel with a report? What are its failure modes?
- (HM) If you imagine a hypothetical perfect candidate for this role, what skills do they have?
- (HM) What is promotable work in this role? What are typical reasons a packet is rejected?
- How often do you have to work over weekends?
- What does crunch time look like?
- What’s your worst experience being on call?
- (HM) How many times in the past 6 months have you asked reports to work overtime?
- (HM) How do you tell if a report’s marching towards burnout? What do you do about it?