General Interview Questions

As I was preparing to leave my full-time job last week, I came across my interview questions file and I saved it. There are some question gems in here that I think are worth sharing, so I’ve decided to do a series of blog posts outlining my favorite interview questions from the many years that I’ve been hiring. I hope you find a couple new questions that you like to enhance your interviews (or maybe even prepare for one).

The Usual Interview Questions

I do like to start out with some general questions, just to get a sense for what drives a person and how they think about their career thus far. So, I typically start with the following:

• How did you become interested in tech?
• Tell me about your career. What have you liked about it so far and what haven’t you liked?

There’s no wrong answer to that first question, although this often becomes an opportunity for me to gauge the general enthusiasm level of the candidates. It also gets them to relax a bit.

That second question gives me a decent sense for first, how clearly and concisely can you talk about your overall career arc. I also get a sense for how your communication skills are in general. Second, I like to hear about what you liked and didn’t like so I can start to imagine what kinds of projects at this organization you might enjoy or what kinds of problems you might be good at solving.

How Do You Learn?

One of the most important traits I’m looking for in any candidate is how they learn and how they keep up with our industry. So, I ask the following questions:

• What are some of your favorite blogs, books, or conferences and why?
• Tell me about a time when you failed and what did you take away from the experience?

With the first question, I am often delighted if the candidate appreciates similar people or reads books I know are solid. That way, I know we’ll start out with some common ground. I am even more delighted if they pique my interest by following someone I don’t know who sounds interesting. That means that this person may bring a new point of view to the team. Diversity goes a long way in solving tough problems.

With the second question, I want to hear that you not only have failures, but you are comfortable talking about them because you view them as learning opportunities. The bigger the failure the better. If you have trouble sharing a time that you failed, you’re either inexperienced or dishonest, neither of which I’m interested in as a hiring manager.

Process & Problem-Solving Interview Questions

I also love to hear about how you think through problems and what you’ve done in the past, so I’ll ask some variation of these three questions.

• Tell me about how you solved the hardest problem you’ve solved in your career so far.
• Can you describe your most significant career accomplishment related to <describe one of our key performance indicators or an area that’s very important for this job>?
• One of the biggest challenges in this job is <a problem we actually have>. If you were to get the job, how would you go about solving it?

Questions for Me

When your interviewer asks if you have any questions for them, this is your chance to really dig in. You’re vetting a company just as much as they are vetting you. If you are the kind of candidate that freezes at this point, here’s a great First Round Review article with some good questions that help you go beyond “what’s the culture like here?”. Personally, I always like to ask what everyone’s favorite and least favorite part of working at the company is. In a panel interview especially, this question yields a cornucopia of information.