Behavioral interviews, focusing on impact vs technical complexity
Posted by sogili_buta@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 11 comments
I'm an engineering manager with 9 YoE. I'm currently in a job hunt to become IC again.
I'm having a hard time preparing for behavioral interviews, being not sure which projects to showcase when asked about past projects. Some of my biggest impact in the organization is implementing low-medium complexity projects with large impacts, or not even doing the implementation myself, but just managing and directing my team.
If you were me, which one would you choose to present, the one with high impact or high technical complexity? Would you only present projects where you have hands-on implementation experience or experience in a more supervisory role also counts? Should you ask your interviewers which focus they prefer?
ICanHazTehCookie@reddit
Imo high impact via low complexity is a skill itself. Rather than complexity or over-engineering for its own sake. Would that be possible to highlight in your scenarios?
sogili_buta@reddit (OP)
Yes it will be possible. I’m just worried that the interviewer will think that the work is not complex enough technically, although it has high impact / high organizational challenges.
throwingaway4949@reddit
Why have you decided to go back to IC?
sogili_buta@reddit (OP)
I found EM work much more draining than IC. I feel like my hard skills are stagnating. A lot of context switching makes me feel getting dumber and hard to concentrate. Too much responsibilities while having similar compensation to some of ICs in my team.
cougaranddark@reddit
I choose scenarios where my STAR formatted story allows me to use situations and traits that are prominent in the job requirements and mission of the company I'm applying to.
For example, the last position I applied to and was hired for stressed that communication with non technical people was key to the position, so I used a scenario that allowed me to highlight that and how it was key to a successful outcome.
couchjitsu@reddit
As an EM what would you have told someone if they asked you what you wanted?
sogili_buta@reddit (OP)
As an EM, if I were the interviewer, I’d choose impact. But maybe that’s just me.
Also, I heard staff engineers sometimes conduct behavioral interviews, they may have a different focus in mind.
t0rt0ff@reddit
Each company may have their own understanding of behavioral interviews, but more often than not you would want to showcase how you interact with stakeholders, how you get unstuck when presented something very vague, how you rally an org to some outcome, etc. I.e. it is mostly about soft skills. A good approach may be preparing a couple projects and asking what would interviewer want to discuss. By default you probably should lean towards showcasing a project with non-trivial "soft" complexity.
vbrbrbr2@reddit
High nontechnical complexity - collaboration across multiple teams, organisational difficulties etc. And pick something that was actually shipped and used.
originalchronoguy@reddit
Neither.
To me, that is not the purpose of behavioral. It is not to measure impact. Sure, impact can be a collateral advantage. But to me, behavioral is how you deal with the conflicts within the execution. Not the execution or end result of that execution.
Example of behavioral is how to settle arguments between two seniors with conflicting views.
Another is how you communicate across siloes, win stakeholders and people who obstruct you to get to your end result which is the impact you are alluding to.
poipoipoi_2016@reddit
I prep both and then ask.
I have "Migrated multiple services into a regional configuration over a few years" (Insane impact, lots of process showing that I CAN do process, took several months because of process and guardrails and we can discuss those tradeoffs) and "Took a company from 0 to 1 (Technically 5)" where I spent half the time balancing process and speed but also the complexity is insane".
Sometimes they say "Present whatever" and then I pick one.