I do a lot of interviews. In an interview I try to dig deeply into a candidate’s experience, understand how they think, make sure that their experience is a match for the position that they’re interviewing for, and anticipate whether they will be able to take on greater challenges that will be coming in the future. A well-done interview is a frank assessment of a candidate’s background and which projects in their history were more or less valuable.
Because I’m so heavily on one side of the table, I find the following thought really helpful:
If you were interviewing for a new job tomorrow, what would you say about your job today?
I really like this question because it forces me to make sure that I’m covering a number of different developmental bases: my team as a whole, individuals who report to me, and myself.
Modern software development work is done as an member of a team. The work that the team produces is a result of everyone’s contributions. What was your individual contribution to a feature or project? What can you do on tomorrow’s feature to highlight what it is that you do best? Are you continuing to stay up on current trends in the industry or are you only learning things that are applicable to your specific project?
I also ask this question for each of my direct reports. Are they getting the right opportunities and skills they need to sell their current work as valuable in their next position? How would you evaluate their contributions over the last few months if you were interviewing them again? If there are deficiencies here, how can you help your team members move past them?
Finally, what is the team as a whole doing that is worth selling? Are the problems it is working only unique to its project (a negative)? If your team is solving something (problem-wise or technology-wise) that’s only specific to the project, you won’t have a lot of external resources to draw on. If you’re solving problems that are aligned with the industry as a whole, there will be many resources available to help you succeed; for example, libraries, blog posts, and other practitioners.
Fulfilling business objectives is great – it’s the reason that we draw a paycheck. However it’s easy to fall into the grind of the day-to-day and think only about the next feature or project. Long-term, focusing only within the context of your existing project will lead to employees that have skills that are very specialized to their current job. When I apply the “interview test” to my day to day work it forces me outside of this bubble and pushes me to emphasize personal and team development as first-class concerns.