Software Engineers - Please Never Forget that your Communication and Cultural Skills are Also Evaluated
The reason I hold the Software Engineering profession in such high regard continues to be the large volume of hurdles that they must jump over when interviewing with a company. As we all know, first and foremost is the technical assessment. I have client right now whose interviewing process involved two take home assignments before even coming onsite for the in-person interview.
My story here relates to a brilliant Engineering Manager in Austin whose technical and cultural bar is industry top 1%. He is looking to hire a Technical Lead for his engineering team here in Austin and I had a very talented senior software engineer make it three rounds with him but in the end, his candidacy was declined. Technically, he did very well but it all came down to the manager's lack of belief that this software engineer possessed the interpersonal skills needed for this role as well as helping implement some cultural changes within the engineering organization.
I'll paste the engineering manager's words now and while I agreed with this feedback, I have to admit that it was painful to digest. The words below represent an observation that was applied to this senior software engineer and this kind of impression is something that could stay fixated within this manager's mind for a very long time. Here you go,
Please let Anthony know that he got solid thumb ups from my two Principal engineers for the technical part of the interview. So obviously, Anthony is as intelligent and good at his engineering craft as I had hoped. He should be very proud of himself.
The reason I am a no for now is because the tech lead I am looking for needs to be expert at communicating, managing expectations, and mentoring members of the team. Anthony is brilliant as an individual contributor but he still has some ways to go to hone his communication skills to be a strong technical lead. Given my organization needs to go through cultural changes right now, I would like to look for people who could help make that a reality.
I really liked Anthony but he's just not the right fit for what we need right now. If I see any other opportunities emerge in my network, I will let him know so that he can land someplace very nicely.
I'm not in any position to share my thoughts here because I would rather have my reading audience digest this feedback on their own terms from this Engineering Manager. Please never forget that in addition to your technical skills as a software engineer, you will also be assessed in terms of your communication skills as well as your ability to contribute to a company's culture for the better. And irregardless of our profession, a judgment that is always applied to candidates who are interviewing for an opportunity is their ability to "manage expectations". Please do your absolute best to convey or even directly communicate that you are quite gifted in that capacity.
Let's talk briefly about the feedback above in terms of being a Mentor. Not all of us can claim that status but even if you possess just 5+ years experience as a software engineer, whenever the moment presents itself, can you talk about times in your career when you helped your co-workers get better at their craft? Where you collaborated with them in a truly positive and healthy capacity? You have my words here that you do not have to communicate to the hiring manager that you have functioned as a Mentor but in your career as a software engineer, the #1 experience you have always pursued is that not only yourself but your coworkers sharpen their talents after each and every project that you work on them with. In your eyes, it is all about you and your coworkers getting better each and every day in your job as a Software Developer. Verbally delivering such a narrative to a Hiring Manager will definitely leave a position impression on them.
And how about this last paragraph from the Hiring Manager referencing how Anthony is not the right fit for "what they need right now"? As you begin an interviewing process with a company, trust me when I say that there is critical value in letting the company kick things off and do all of the talking at the beginning. As you settle into the first interview, whether it be the Hiring Manager or one of the company's Principal Engineers, can you politely ask them what they specifically need out of this person that they are looking to hire? When we know what another party is looking for, it makes our delivery and focus a great deal easier and more accurate. I can't blame a software engineer that goes strictly on a company's job description but please never forget that as you settle in on that first interview, the other person will give you a lot more color and detail about the opportunity at hand. Take all of that in and going forward in the process, very clearly express to the Hiring Manager as well as everyone else that you very much possess the cultural and interpersonal qualities that the company needs out of this hire.
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In closing, I felt badly for Anthony because I was not aware that these core requirements were needed beyond the technical skills for this role. This feedback, while nice and detailed, also caught me by surprise but I was grateful for it because for our future candidates, I plan to make it very clear that they need to be super impressive on both the technical and interpersonal sides of the fence. But for my reading audience, please never forget that a company will be evaluating you well beyond the job description and as you begin the interviewing process with a company, please do whatever you can do discover what else it is that they are looking for in this hire. Specifically on the interpersonal and cultural side of the fence.
Thanks,
Mark Cunningham
Technical Recruiter
512-699-5719
iOS Developer at Kroger | Software Engineer | Problem Solver
2moOn the flip side, being someone who is very personable and not the typical dev personality myself, give me a better path to showing my skills (soft skills included) by having me prove that I can contribute to enterprise-level codebases, which is what you want to hire me for, NOT Leetcode puzzles to prove a point that I can manipulate data in collections without looking at a resource for syntax. That has to change.
Rescuing clients’ IoT, Backend, and Golang from LLMs
2moI can see why Anthony may have read the room wrong. A company that expects two take-home assignments completed before you're allowed to talk to a human being could easily be viewed as valuing technical acumen over communication abilities.
Senior Software Engineer | Smart and laid back
2moWow, _two_ technical assessments? That's two too many. It's hilarious how we live in a digital Lake Wobegon where every company has a mathematically impossible top 1% bar. But point well taken about being able to communicate effectively.
Engineering Leader | Technical Director | Innovator | Author of The Innovation Chronicles newsletter
2moThis was an excellent article. Thank you so much for sharing this. As a hiring manager, I have had to write similar paragraphs. I cannot stress how important these three things are: Communication -- so that you can interact with your team Empathy -- such that you understand that actions have human consequences Self Awareness -- I have found certain candidates that lack of this, and it limits their career potential, particularly those who want to be on a leadership track. After a certain point in an engineer's career, if they aspire to leadership, they need to master the soft skills. It is a given they have technical proficiency. However, leadership requires so much more than that. Compiling code is NOT the same as being a leader and knowing how to manager a code red crisis. One thing I would always say to staff, "I only have one goal for you. That's for me to be in the position to grow your career. I can only do that if you are in a constant state of self development."