In This Chapter

Can you walk me through your resume?

What recent project have you worked on?

Why do you want to work here?

What feature would you add to or remove from product X?

What team conflict have you resolved?

What is your ideal company and job?

What is your superpower?

Which three adjectives would your friends use to describe you?

What do you know to be true that most people disagree with or find surprising?

What questions do you have for me?

You learned to code. You built your portfolio. You submitted your prototypes to Hacker News, Product Hunt, and Reddit, and people rewarded you with upvotes. All that work helped you secure some phone and in-person interviews from companies that want to learn more about you.

Interview questions generally fall into two categories: technical questions and culture and fit questions. A technical question is one where you are asked to design or solve a technical challenge. A culture and fit question assesses whether you would fit in and work well with the current team of employees.

The questions listed in this chapter are some of the most common culture and fit questions. For each question, the interviewer is asking you one thing but listening for something else. Read on to understand what the interviewer is assessing while you answer the question.

Can You Walk Me through Your Resume?

Ideally, the question “Can you walk me through your resume?” is unnecessary if your interviewer has read your resume before meeting you, did a Google search on your name, read your recent tweets and blog posts, and even checked out some of the projects in your portfolio. In reality, an interviewer may come to the interview prepared but is just as likely to instead be unprepared, breathlessly running from meeting to meeting.

Even if your interviewer knows who you are, this question is meant to

• Build rapport between you and the interviewer
• Help you get ready to talk (a lot!) and become comfortable by speaking about a topic you know intimately — you!
• Give you the opportunity to highlight the best parts of your past

Many interviewees hear this question and launch into a long and detailed biography. Practice until you can answer this question in less than one minute, which will allow interviewers to continue the conversation by diving into the areas they find most interesting. You can also use this question to share a little more about what you learned from each experience. Perhaps you previously worked in marketing but felt more satisfaction creating a product than just pitching it, or you worked on a game and found the process less fun than you thought it would be.

Use your resume to include details about leadership, teamwork, or impact from your previous projects. Examples of impact include details on the revenue generated, time saved, users who signed up, or the size of your team. These “breadcrumbs” make it easy for interviewers to ask more questions about a particular project.

What Recent Project Have Your Worked On?

By now you have likely worked on a few projects, so you have some options to discuss when asked, “What recent project have you worked on?” Every project has two pieces — the story behind the project’s creation, and the technical decisions made when coding the project. While your interviewer will be mostly interested in the technical side of the project, a good story will make your project more memorable.

Your design choices carry more weight if you have some expertise pertaining to the problem that the app solves. For example, maybe you created a bike route mapping app because you used to be on the bicycle team, or you launched a cheap flight tickets app because you love flying and have visited over 40 countries. Unless your interviewer is also a bicyclist or travel enthusiast, he or she will take your word that these are the most important features to build.

The interviewer is assessing a few areas with this question, including:

• Build versus buy: A coding project is a combination of many parts. For each part, you need to prioritize what you will build versus what you will buy or incorporate from someone else. For example, if you are building a restaurant reservation app, it may be faster to use Google, Yelp, or Foursquare to get a list of restaurants rather than trying to gather the data yourself.
• Community knowledge: Every day, coders release tools, libraries, and APIs that make it easier to program. You would likely only know about them if you spent some time following the community. For example, suppose that you follow the latest in mobile mapping for your bike route mapping app, and you found a mapping library with greater speed and accuracy than other industry solutions. Showing the interviewer that you know something about even a small technical area will translate into you coding more efficiently when you are on the job.
• Technical efficiency: For the parts of the app you did build, be ready to talk about the algorithms you created and potential alternative solutions you could have used. Programs are written against a set of constraints, and the interviewer might challenge how you think by making you respond to stronger constraints. For example, your cheap flight tickets app may query as many airlines as possible in two minutes to find the lowest price, but how would your app design change if you had only twenty seconds to query airlines for the lowest price?

Coding is never a perfect process: There is a goal outlined in a specification, the code you write to achieve that goal, the obstacles you face along the way, and the final product. The interviewer will want to see how you handled each of these parts because you will follow the same journey when you join a company as a developer.

Why Do You Want to Work Here?

When asked, “Why do you want to work here?” most interviewers are not looking for the answer, “Because you’ll have me!”

When you started your job search, you probably used a few filters to start your search and then narrow the list. You may have chosen companies in an industry you like or those located in a specific city. Industry and geography are fine reasons to mention, but try to go deeper if possible.

The interviewer is looking to see whether you have researched to find a little more information than what is available on the company home page or blog. Here are some potential responses for you to explore:

• Mission: Alignment with the company’s mission is always a good reason to want to work at a company. For example, if you’re applying to a company that builds a workout app, it’s good to mention your interest in physical fitness.

  However, so many people use the company’s mission as the reason for applying that it can sometimes be hard for an interviewer to separate those who are genuine from those who are faking it. For this reason, make sure to recall past experiences that show genuine interest. In the case of applying to the workout app company, perhaps you could mention your time on the basketball team, the recent half-marathon you ran, or your blog post on doing the 7-minute workout for a month. If your hobbies and activities naturally tie in to the work a company does, don’t be afraid to mention them.

• Role: Before interviewing, have enough conversation with employees so you have a good idea of the three to four projects you might work on if you were hired, and then express interest in the work and the role. At smaller companies, you’ll likely have a broad role on whatever you work on; at larger companies, your role might be narrower but your company might set the standard for the industry. Gaining more responsibility or learning from a major industry player are both great reasons to work at a specific company.

• Employee connection: Referring to conversations and relationships you’ve had with current employees acts as a positive reference for you, and shows your interviewer that you’ve taken time to better understand the company and its culture. You can’t know someone at every company you’re applying to, but when you do know someone it can be a great boost.

  Don’t make your connection to an employee larger than it actually is. Your interviewer is almost sure to ask the coworker about you, and nothing sinks a candidate faster than the coworker saying, “I don’t really know him that well.”

• Long-time user: Every technology product has users, and power users of a product often make great employees because they know exactly what works well and what needs improvement. While other candidates might ask about features that have already been built or were retired, you’ll know all about the product’s history. Use your knowledge to ask how where the product is going, and how that direction fits with what the team has learned from past product decisions.

  For just about any tech product, it is easy to verify when you joined and how frequently you use the product. Make sure you don’t claim to be a power user if you used the product for only a week more than a year ago.

What Feature Would You Add to or Remove from Product X?

Developers and their time are in short supply, so teams constantly debate about what to build next. To see how you could contribute to the discussion, your interviewer might ask you about a product you use frequently, and one feature you would add or remove. Usually the product is external to the company, so you should feel comfortable giving honest feedback.

When answering this question, ground your thoughts in facts of some kind, and debate a product’s merits in a constructive way. It’s typically fair game to rely on larger market trends, features in competitors’ products, feedback from users, and your own experience. After you know why you would add or remove a product feature, the other question to answer is how. Consider how the technical work would need to be accomplished, how that affects the current product, and whether the addition or removal is feasible.

For example, my favorite app is Google Maps, and the feature I would add is integration of public bike sharing when the bike option is selected during route planning. This feature could increase usage of the app because bike share riders take tens of millions of bike trips annually, public bike ridership is expected to increase as cities increase the number of available bikes, and a competitor, Citymapper, already has an app that includes public bikes as part of its route planning. On the technical side, there are some serious considerations to consider. Knowing a bike kiosk location isn’t enough — I also need to know whether any bikes are at the location. Even when bike data is available, it is usually delayed by 15 to 30 minutes, providing outdated and inaccurate data in high volume areas. Finally, I need to know whether including this feature and pulling this data would slow down the overall speed of the Google Maps app.

As you can see, many considerations both help and hurt my case, all of which makes for a good discussion with the interviewer.

What Team Conflict Have You Resolved?

In the past, coding was largely a solo activity. Many of the most famous programs and programming languages were created by one or two people. Today, however, software development is a team-based activity. Tools such as Git, SVN, and Mercurial allow coworkers to work on the same piece of code. Companies need to ensure that you can work well with the existing team and deal with inevitable conflicts.

Team conflicts occur for so many reasons, such as miscommunication, office politics, changing technical requirements, competitive pressure, or underperforming teammates. When asked, “What team conflict have you resolved?”, choose one that involves serious stakes, with people you know well, and where you played an active role to reach a resolution. This approach will allow you to easily answer any follow-up questions.

Interviews are short enough that you won’t have time to go into every detail, so use the SOAR framework to keep your thoughts concise:

• Situation: Briefly describe any relevant context to understanding your story — the participants, your relationship with them, the goal everyone is working toward, and the result of success or failure.
• Obstacle: Conflicts can arise between people or when working with limited resources, such as time or money. Highlight all the areas that made achieving the ultimate goal difficult.
• Action: Focus on the specific action you took, which usually involves repairing relations between people or improving a process. It’s best if the action didn’t succeed on the first try; otherwise, the obstacle probably wasn’t that difficult.
• Resolution: Describe the effect of solving this issue, and try to frame it in terms of time saved or money generated. For example, did your solution have no perceived effect, or were you able to create $1 million in additional revenue?

Practice until you can describe all these pieces in less than two minutes. If you’re doing a good job telling the story, expect the interviewer to ask you many questions that really dig into what happened.

You likely don’t have stories about team conflicts in a technical context. That’s okay. You can use any previous experience; what matters most is your contribution and the quality of the story.

What Is Your Ideal Company and Job?

The question “What is your ideal company and job?” is as much about finding out what you are looking for as it is for the company to see if it can provide it. On first blush, you may not have strong preferences, but give it some thought because anything you flag upfront as important to you can become a negotiating point later.

If you do have preferences, show your future employer that you understand the resulting implications. For example, you may hear companies raving about their open office space and flat organizational structure. The flip side is that it can be too noisy to get any work done, and the lack of clear decision makers can stall execution of important decisions. Paint a picture of your own trajectory, and be clear about the direction you want to take your career.

Here are some factors to consider when thinking about your ideal company and job:

• Company size: Perhaps you previously worked at a big company, and now you want to bring your expertise to a smaller shop where you will have more influence. Alternatively, maybe you come from a small company and now want the influence of a larger player. Even large companies have small teams, so have a sense for what size is best for you.
• Travel: Developers don’t usually travel much unless they’re located in a different city than the company office. Some tech firms have no problems with remote workers, while for other companies remote workers never feel like part of the team. If you must work remotely, one compromise is to offer to travel to the home office once every four to six weeks if the company will pay for it.
• Remote work: Some products require intense collaboration or have a culture where everyone works in the office. Other companies have employees who regularly work from home two or more days a week. A liberal remote work policy can be beneficial if you have a long commute or kids to take care of occasionally at home.
• Organizational structure: Smaller companies usually can have a more undefined organizational structures in which you don’t report directly to a boss and your team provides feedback on your performance. For example, Valve Corp, a 400-person, $4 billion company, has no bosses or upper-level management and bonuses are determined by team consensus. One way to test which type of company you’re interviewing with is to ask who your direct manager would be.
• Role: Think about what you want in the role. Perhaps you want to work with or further develop specific technologies. Technology aside, maybe you want strong mentorship or the chance to manage a team. Being honest in the interview will help set expectations and give your employer the chance to create a good experience for everyone involved.
• Evaluations and reviews: Make sure you understand how you will be evaluated and reviewed. You may want specific targets, or some room to explore and set your own targets. Even if how you will be evaluated isn’t clear yet, find out how the company generally evaluates employees.

If possible, investigate these factors before the interview so you know upfront whether any of your preferences differ greatly from how the company usually operates.

What Is Your Superpower?

The question, “What is your superpower?” tries to bring out what makes you special. Variations to this question include the airport test, which asks: If your flight was delayed, would your interviewer want to be stuck with you at the airport? Similarly, Zappos, the online shoe company, asks in interviews how weird you are on a scale of 1 to 10.

Answer this question by speaking to an area of strength that you haven’t talked about before. You superpower might be attending thirty conferences a year but never needing to pay, always getting the exit row on an airplane, being an internationally ranked poker player, or having 200,000 Twitter followers.

Think about what makes you unique and interesting. Then after you answer, ask your interviewer about his or her superpower.

Which Three Strengths and Weaknesses Would Your Friends Use to Describe You?

Neil Roseman, the former VP of Technology at Amazon, and Michelle Peluso, the CEO of Gilt, have both said that they like asking “Which three adjectives would friends use to describe you?” because it forces candidates to give a more balanced view of themselves. Another variation of this question is to ask a candidate for three strengths and weaknesses.

Overall, this question can be tough to answer and trip up even the strongest interviewers. Although it can be painful, the first tip is to show that you have the self-awareness to know that you aren’t perfect. Choose some adjectives that describe you positively, and some that expose a weakness.

When talking about a weakness, choose one that is authentic to you, but won’t raise any red flags. For example, saying that you have anger management issues is probably too revealing. Some honest example weaknesses I have heard described by junior interviewees include not contributing enough in team meetings, micromanaging or excessively worrying about tasks you’ve delegated, or not having enough organization or a process for tasks.

For any weakness you choose, have some concrete steps you are taking to work on the issue, which is really what the interviewer is looking for. Finally, for both in areas of strength and weakness, be prepared to talk about specific examples that show the adjective in action.

What Do You Know to Be True that Most People Disagree With or Find Surprising?

The question, “What do you know to be true that most people disagree with or find surprising?” is a favorite of PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel. The purpose of the question is to see whether you can generate insights, and speak out and share them. Useful answers are based on facts, rather than personal opinions, and help start a conversation.

Although the question is open, avoid topics that deal with religion, race, or sex. You or your interviewer may have strong feelings, and there won’t be enough time in an interview to resolve them.

For example, one interesting fact is that trains and subways in the US rely on monitoring instead of penalties to ensure people are paying for a ticket. In New York, riders take almost 2 billion rides on the subway each year, and a ticket is checked for every ride. A less costly administrative approach that could result in the same number of ticket purchases might be to randomly check a fraction of riders exiting the subway; those without tickets pay a hefty fine.

Such a system might or might not work for many reasons, leaving you with plenty to discuss with the interviewer.

What Questions Do You Have for Me?

You’ve done a great job answering all of the interviewer’s questions, and with a few minutes left the interviewer asks, “What questions do you have for me?” The thought here is that some questions may have come up during the interview. However, the interviewer is also seeing whether you’ll take the opportunity to dig in to learn more about a job where you potentially will be spending many if not most of your waking hours.

As the interviewee, don’t use this time to ask for information that you can easily find on the company website or from a recruiter or HR professional. Do use this time to ask personal questions, especially now that both you and the interviewer know each other. Potential questions to ask include:

• What has been your favorite project or team so far?
• If you had to leave this job tomorrow, what would you do and why?
• No job is perfect, so what would you change about your current job?
• What is one stretch goal you have this year that if accomplished would make the year a resounding success?

The answers to these questions could help you spot some of the better performing internal teams, the interviewer’s true job ambitions, and parts of the job you may not love.