Ask HN: How do I interview someone for a more senior position than mine? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do I interview someone for a more senior position than mine?

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Due to some availability issues with my team, I need to interview someone for a more senior position than mine. It's more of a lunch/conversational interview and not a coding interview. What kind of questions should I be asking to gauge the person's technical and leadership skills?

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I have one advise for you, don't assume that because a candidate is more senior than you, he or she should at least know what you know.

Try instead to learn something interesting from the candidate. At the end of your lunch, if you learned something that could help you in your day to day tasks, or in general, maybe it's a thumbs up from your perspective. Let the rest of the team figure the rest out.

I agree. If your organization needs to hire someone senior to existing employees, then learning from that senior hire is (should be) a major part of their role.

I like asking what their definition of a senior engineer is. Good candidates will have answers that are multi dimensional: eg. ability to drive technical change, mentor junior engineers, design system that solve complex problems in a simple way, etc.

There's plenty of possible answers, but it's interesting to know what their vision is (whether it's in line with your view or not, it should still be enlightening).

1. Tell me how you help to develop the careers of your direct reports. Have you helped someone get promoted? What was their level before they got promoted and how you helped them to succeed?

2. Tell me about the pipeline of an idea from inception to delivery. (Give them opportunities to talk about points where people interact. Your looking to see if they think the ideas of the people at or below your level in the org are important and heard.)

3. Ask them to explain something in their org that is similar to your companies in as much tech detail as possible. Try to gauge if they have taken the time to understand what the different components in their system are.

Ask them to teach you about something the position would require. Success is you understanding what they needed to teach you during the interview.

Q: What questions do you have for me? What are top 2-3 most important areas WE should discuss in our limited time together?

The questions the candidate ask of you (as a potential colleague or direct report) are vitally important.

We're looking for curiosity, intellectual agility, overall business acumen.

There's also a culture match aspect. Can you live with guy?

Been there done that. Especially the LUNCH interview is to see if you guys can get along. The one I did, the guy was slightly senior, but he took it as way senior (i.e. not going to do wok, but just tell us to work harder). This as LONG ago and it was a team lead position. But he was acting like he was going for Director of SW dev. Anyway he did not get it as both of us thought he was way to arrogant to fit in.

Out of personal curiosity, I like to ask more experienced people about their leadership philosophy. Specifically, "How do you see yourself as a leader?" Apart from often being educational for myself, how somebody answers this questions says a lot about their character.

It seems obvious, but perhaps you should ask your bosses what they want you to ask or find out about this person? At best, your role here is to screen the person for your bosses - at worst, which seems to be the case here, it's to waste everyone's time. If I were interviewing for a senior position and I was asked to get lunch with a junior person with no clear agenda, I'd be concerned about the lack of seriousness of the organization.

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