From the course: Job Interview Tips for Software Engineers

How to approach this question

From the course: Job Interview Tips for Software Engineers

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How to approach this question

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- [Instructor] I've asked and I've been asked this question more times than I can count. When you're asked this question, your interviewer is looking for several key competencies and a signal. They're looking for your judgment, your ability to make trade-offs, can you measure success, so on and so forth. So as you frame your answer consider the following touchpoints. First, start with some reflection. What made the problem complex and why was it necessary to solve? Correlating the business complexity to business value is critical so that you can tie the need of the problem, and the complexity and the solution to what added value for the business long-term. Carve out the characters and discuss your role in solving the problem. Every major initiative has supporters and skeptics, leaders and people who play small parts. Explain how in order to lead you mixed authority and influence. Tell the story in parts. What were the key inflection points where you felt that you were making progress and then some others that called for a course correction? Problem-solving is rarely linear, so explain the narrative, and this is critical, because you want to keep your listener engaged. Finally, explain how you measure success. It is vital, critical, and important that you show your work with data, business changes, product evolution, market penetration, et cetera. Remember, if you cannot measure it, you cannot prove it, and most probably it didn't happen. These are key insights for software engineering candidates to offer in their response because engineers far too often jump straight to solutioning, and that is a very understandable first instincts because engineers love to solve problems. And I've made that mistake too, but remember, context is a critical precondition for content. This is true on the job, but even more so before you get the job when you don't have those shared relationships and shared context with your interviewer.

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