I was enjoying the process, however, I was misjudged at the end and was rejected on a behavioral question.
The story I shared, summarized, edited to meet guidelines;
I had worked on a project with a team of contractors to integrate our systems with our customers. The project was a success. The contractors moved on and I was one of two people within the company that had domain knowledge.
The new task was to implement the same internally for three of our services with a view to link others in the future (20+). This required a custom implementation of a RFC spec due to legacy constraints. A fellow peer, who was one of the two with domain knowledge, suggested that a series of redirects could find the information if any and relay it back to the service in question.
My opinion;
- It won’t scale
- The data passed in the redirect(s) could leak information
- All the negative scenarios…. So many :(
The counterpoint to this was it could be done fast and it would scale.
The above story resulted in one or more people in Personio thinking that I finger pointed and blamed my peer for this mistake. It was a team decision and I would never be disrespectful and unprofessional towards him or others.
Just for context this is how that story ended which I don’t think was shared during the interview.
I spent about 6 to 8 months building a system I didn’t believe would meet the needs of the company without complaint. We were asked by the company to deliver the two new features (which required the redirect(s) and the other two services). I had expressed concern about the complexities and suggested we have a meet with all of the team and include the new reporting manager who was technically capable . The manager wasn’t part of the original design and he himself had expressed concerns in this approach as it seemed creative. My manager and peer had a long geek chat using the whiteboard to explore the issue, turns out my manager had past experience in this domain/spec and shared low level details which had changed the opinion of my peer.
The next question was from my manager which was “Now that we have found and agreed on the issue, how do we move forward?” We all agreed it would take some time to fix (rebuild, I got a little excited) and our stakeholder stated the cost was too high, so it was dropped.
At no point was anyone judged, blamed or punished for any mistake made. It happens, we fail all the time in this game. The key in my view is to fail fast and get on with it as a team. I’d also like to state that me and the peer in question butted heads often and produced much value for the company. We never took it personal and had great respect for one another.
For an interviewer to take a shared story out of context and accuse me of being a toxic engineer was very hurtful. I view what I do as a craft and any good engineer knows it’s not all about the code, there are soft skills required to contribute to a strong team.
I’d also given my view on vulnerability and how important it is in a team. To have a team member that can feel comfortable to approach others with an issue, look for help or advice holds value to the team and the company as a whole, that can’t exist if finger pointing and blame game is being played.
In fact I was asked how I would deal with someone like that and I’d stated I’d nip it in the bud there and then professionally and respectfully.
I like to view failure as unannounced training and there are a few lessons here for both of us:
- Me: My feedback was I was blunt. So, be less blunt during interviews.
- Me: Also stated I was informal. A subjective view, but I’ll have to prep more and be mindful/aware.
- Personio: I’d suggest you take time to discuss the feedback with one another in detail, I feel some of the points I made can only be true if you are a team player.
- Personio: Given your values and principles I’d suggest applying both “Empathy” and “Be Diligent” in your interviews. If a red flag presents itself, give the interviewee a chance, explore the potential red flag, don’t make assumptions on little context and judge them assumptions.
Tips for engineers in the running
- Don’t read the above as a total write off of Personio, it was a subjective view of somebody's assumptions caused by my poor communication of a partial story told under stress.
- Don’t be blunt, they view it as a negative.
- Don’t be informal in your communication or how you dress (stated in a video they have no dress code, but better safe than sorry)
- They place a lot of weight on the behavioral questions, so be mindful of how you answer, if you're not complete in sharing the full context, they may fill it for you and then judge you on their assumptions.
Kind regards