The Hiring Manager Screen

Tech Manager Handbook: A Series

What the hiring manager screen is

Most interview processes at modern technology companies involve a phone screen stage and a full-day (or “on-site” as we used to call it) stage. The hiring manager (HM) screen typically comes after the initial recruiter phone call and a short technical screening. Despite it’s somewhat brief, conversational, introductory, and non-technical nature, there is still a lot you can learn from this interview if you are deliberate about what you talk about and how you ask questions. Keep in mind that if a candidate passes this stage they are likely headed for the full-day interview slate, meaning 4–6 of your co-workers will each spend 45–60 minutes interviewing them and writing feedback. It is your job to make sure that it is a good use of everyone’s time.

Don’t fall into the common trap

So, you’ve just hopped out of your previous meeting, spent 5 minutes skimming their resume and reading the prior recruiter/technical feedback, and decide to jump right into it. At this point it can be really easy not to take full advantage of this interview and just “have a conversation” with the candidate. You’ll be able to tell that you’re doing this if your feedback is routinely “4-out-of-5 stars” with fairly generic and vague statements like “the candidate has an interesting background and seemed excited about the role,” “we had a good conversation and I think they could be a good fit for the team,” or “they seemed sharp and were a pretty good communicator.” These statements probably apply to 99% of the people that should even be making it to the HM screen in the first place, so it doesn’t really provide any new or valuable information. Avoid this trap since it wastes both your time and the candidates.

What you can learn

Of course you want to evaluate their communication style, their relevant experience, and their enthusiasm for the role/company. But beyond that, you can still ask about what relevant technical tools/languages they use in their day-to-day and have them explain their level of proficiency/experience with them; sure it isn’t a robust technical evaluation but how deeply they can speak to this can still provide a good signal. You should also ask what they are looking for in their next role (this might tell you something about the challenges they are facing in their current role, which might even hint at some potential red flags). If a candidate struggles to answer either of these kinds of questions it could be enough to disqualify them.

You should walk away not only knowing whether or not the candidate is strong enough to move forward to the next stage, but also what their biggest gaps or red flags are so you can make sure the “on-site” panel is well-equipped to evaluate those areas sufficiently. You want to avoid biasing the interviewers but you absolutely want to clue them into which areas they should be sure to dig into and focus on. Ultimately you’re going to have to make a decision to make a job offer to the candidate or not; if you picked up on a red flag in the HM screen that doesn’t get probed any further during later interviews you’re going to find yourself hesitating to make a decision one way or another. This might even mean you wind up reaching out to the candidate to schedule an additional interview to target the area in question. Dragging out the process can be a good way to lose strong candidates and frustrate your recruiting partner, so try to avoid it if at all possible.

Gatekeeping

Always keep in mind that at this stage you are the ultimate gatekeeper between the candidate and the on-site interview. On-site interviews require a lot of time and effort from a number of people (not just interviewers, but recruiters, recruiting coordinators, yourself, and the candidate!) so be very mindful who you let past the HM screen stage. If you find yourself on the fence, trying asking yourself some clarifying questions like “can I envision this person being a successful member of the team?” or “do I believe this candidate will be successful in the rest of the interview process?” Sometimes you might find yourself thinking “yeah, probably” to the former question but having some serious doubts with the latter (maybe that signals that the interview process needs to be tweaked, but usually it means the candidate probably won’t meet the bar).

There is no hard and fast rule around what the correct “pass rate” should be (it really depends on the quality of your candidate pipeline and how high you set the bar). That being said, with a healthy candidate pipeline and a reasonable bar for expectations you should probably expect to reject 15–25% of candidates at this stage. If it is much lower then you aren’t either aren’t getting enough signal in the HM screen or you need to increase the bar. If your rejection rate is much higher you should go back to the drawing board by revisiting the job listing and re-calibrating your recruiting partner.

Take notes

Especially now that most interviews are done remotely, you can type in a lightweight editor throughout the interview without creating an awkward in-person note-taking dynamic (try not to type so loudly that your microphone picks up the clicking of the keys — that can be even more awkward especially if the candidate is mid-sentence).

I often think to myself that I will easily remember what I discussed in an interview but unless I submit feedback right away I will often forget notable details or red flags that I picked up on during the interview and my feedback becomes more generic and vague (i.e. less useful). It is great practice to set aside 5–15 minutes right after an interview ends (literally block out the time on your calendar in advance if you can) so you can write feedback while the conversation is still fresh in your mind. Taking notes can help you write high-quality feedback later if you aren’t able to write it right away.

The agenda template

A HM screen is typically 30–45 minutes depending on the role. These are the relatively standard areas you probably want to cover:

1. Exchange pleasantries, be a normal person (1–2 minutes)
2. Introduce yourself (2–5 minutes)
3. Have them choose a project and explain it (10-15 minutes)
4. Day-to-day tech stack (2–3 minutes)
5. What they’re looking for and why they’re interested (2–3 minutes)
6. Always save time for their questions (3–5 minutes)

Exchange pleasantries, be a normal person

Before you even get started, be friendly, thank them for taking the time to chat, mention how excited you are to speak with them and how their background seems like the perfect fit for the team, etc. It is awkward/robotic to just jump into “start interview” mode without pleasantries. You may even casually ask things like “so, you’re based in the Bay Area, right?”, simple things that break the tension and get the conversation going (just be sensible and try to avoid small talk that would make HR nervous like “do you have any kids?”). It’s okay to abruptly segue into the rest of the interview so you don’t waste too much time. You can say something like “okay, so what I had in mind for the call today is…” and basically outline the agenda given above (without making it sound like you’re literally reading from a script). Be sure to let them know you’ll save a few minutes at the end for their questions so that you don’t get sidetracked by ad hoc questions or tangents throughout the interview (you will likely answer many of their questions along the way already).

Introduce yourself

Think of the introduction in three phases, all of which you want to cover in under 5 minutes.

You

I like to spend 1–2 minutes introducing myself. It can be helpful to walk them through your journey at the company (or prior to joining, like where you’re from, what you studied, or even where you worked before). Everyone’s story is a bit unique and you should rehearse it a few times so it flows naturally. Emphasize particular parts of your story that are seem most relevant to the candidate; while you shouldn’t base your interview assessment on these things, it can make the interview feel a little more conversational and personal which can go a long way in making them want to work with/for you. I have a lot of thoughts about how the entire interview is also a sales process and that you should always be selling, but that is a topic for another time.

The team

You can segue from talking about yourself to talking about the team by describing your role within the team. You can talk about the size of the team, the growth of the team, the location of the team, the variety of academic or industry backgrounds people have across the team, and the types of projects your team works on (in terms they can kind of understand, without going into significant detail). You can also talk about how your team fits into the broader organization or company. Avoid internal jargon. Abstract away the complexity and weirdness of specific internal job titles/profiles or bespoke internal product/team names. Again, speak in terms that someone who doesn’t work at your company can easily understand and relate to.

The company

This is probably the shortest bit to spend time on. You can talk about the size of the your team relative to the rest of your org or company, the work culture of the team (do you operate more like a start-up or a mature company?), and how your business unit may fit into the broader company (either via shared tooling and infrastructure, office location(s), collaboration, community events, etc.)

It can seem cumbersome (and repetitive if you are doing many interviews) but this goes a long way to paint an accurate picture of the role and how it fits in to the broader context; if you do this well you’ve made it easier for them to clearly imagine what it would be like to work with you, your team, and your company, which go a long way in making a candidate feel like it is a natural fit.

Have them choose a project and explain it

Have them spend 10–15 minutes walking you through a previous technical project they were involved in. Interrupt (politely) frequently and ask questions. Evaluate the depth and extent of their knowledge about the details of the work and pay attention to what their exact role was (solo contributor? tech lead? fringe collaborator? etc.):

• Do they avoid getting deep into what seem like important details?
• Do they struggle to explain basic elements of their technical approach clearly?
• Have they not yet considered what seem like obvious questions they should have encountered about the problem or their approach?
• Did they choose to discuss a project that isn’t related to the role they are interviewing for?
• Did they choose to discuss a project where their role was minimal or that hasn’t shipped yet?

Even if the answer to only one of the above questions is “yes” that could be a significant enough red flag to pass on the candidate.

They should also be able to explain what the business motivation for the work was, how they determined or measured success, and if the work ever made it “into production” (and if so, do they continue to monitor ongoing performance, etc.). This will tell you a lot about their understanding of the broader business, how their work fits into the bigger picture, and the level of ownership they bring to their work; this is particularly important when evaluating more senior candidates.

Day-to-day tech stack

Although this isn’t a technical interview, you can learn a lot just by asking candidates what languages and tools they are using in their day-to-day (if for a technical role). For example, if they say Python, R, C, or MATLAB, that is probably relevant to understanding their ability to be successful on the team and in the interview process. You can simply ask how often or long they’ve used certain tools or have them rate their level of familiarity (people are generally pretty honest about this sort of thing).

What they’re looking for and why they’re interested

Spend a minute asking the candidate:

1. “What are you looking for in your next role?”
2. “Why are considering new opportunities?” (be mindful in how you frame this based on whether the candidate was sourced or applied directly for the job)
3. “What are you interested in us?”

The first is useful when determining how best to sell the candidate (topic for another time), the second can help uncover potential behavioral red flags (e.g. didn’t like their manager, role fit, toxic workplace dynamics, etc.), and the third will tell you a lot about how excited they are about your company, the problems you work on, and gives the candidate a chance to showcase any thinking or preparation they’ve done in advance of the interview.

How they answer the last question can go a long way: if someone is genuinely enthusiastic about the company it can actually more than compensate for minor technical shortfalls. Someone who is excited to work at your company is going to be more motivated to learn what they need to in order to fill skill gaps and be successful when they join and likely will work a lot harder than another candidate that is just looking for a decent job at a reputable tech company (I don’t know how many times I had candidates cite the fact that our office was in San Francisco and not the Peninsula/South Bay as the primary reason they were interested in the company…). Of course, there needs to be a baseline of technical proficiency for their role and level that they can build on, but some of the best people I’ve ever hired have started out in this camp.

Always save time for their questions

Try to save at least 3–5 minutes for questions. Not much advice to give here other than “always be selling” no matter what the questions/answers are. Once you’ve done enough of these you will start to get really good about framing your answers to their questions in ways that highlight the very things they just told you they are looking for in your next role (without sounding contrived).

Final thoughts

The hiring manager screen can be a valuable part of the interview process so long as you make it one. Prioritize breadth over depth in terms of gaining an understanding of the candidate. If you manage time and steer the interview well you can cover a lot of ground and finish with a pretty good holistic evaluation of everything from their communication skills to problem solving abilities, decision making, technical skills, enthusiasm, growth potential, etc., while at the same time finding ways to sell the candidate and get them excited about the role.