How Would You Interview Potential Managers?

martincmartin asks: "The company I work for is starting to interview development managers, and I've been asked to interview a bunch of them. While there's been a lot written on interviewing programmers and what makes a good manager, how do you interview a management candidate? What questions do you ask? What are good and bad answers? What else do you do?"

Comments

What level?

[Opportunist]

Middle management? Top? What area? Sales? Administration? PR? IT?

Designing a standard interview for "a manager" comes close behind making one for "a worker".

Re:What level?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the phrase "development manager" in his query give you any clues?

Re:What level?

[martincmartin]

Middle managers, directly managing around 10 people who write code, and reporting to the product manager.

Re:What level?

[sabinm]

Management skills and technology skills are independent. Don't think that the best manager will be your best coder. Don't even think that your manager will be your average coder. Make sure that your manager has a fundamental idea of how your organization works: your manager will need to understand the reason for regulations and apply them consistently. Your manager will need to be able to work across several working groups at once and understand how to manage his or her superiors as well as manage his or her subordinates. That means tactfully explaining to higher management why this or that project will take more time, less time, or why is not viable. That also means making sure that the team performs well. Consistency helps to make teams successful, but management will be looking at end results. The manager has to understand that most likely the enterprise wants to make money, or at least reduce costs (in case your hypothetical company is a not-for-profit or a government type organization that derives income from taxes or donations). Finally, ask around. Ask around from peers, supervisors, subordinates, and the prospective manager as well. Make sure you know about that person's reputation, and if you'll be able to rely on him or her. You're looking for someone who can spot trends easily, come up with a solution framework and motivate his or her team to implement that solution with good communication with you and other higher management.

You need to tailor your questions to your organization so that you can ask your management candidate specific scenarios about real business practices and then ask him or her 'how would you solve/implement this'?

You'll get a quick idea how well your managers stack up to each other once you develop a way to determine how well your employees work in your specific organization.

Remember: sometimes a manager has to be a jerk. sometimes a manager has to be the heavy. Don't look for the nicest person. You HAVE to be the bad guy once in a while. A good manager is one who lays down the bad news and then still can motivate the team to perform well.

This is not professional advice. You want extensive advice? Call a consultant.

Re:What level?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

OK, I'll take a stab. For reference, so you know how much or how little my opinion is worth, I've steered my career towards being a senior technical person rather than management. I'm pretty much a sideways move from the level of manager you're looking to hire here.

With that disclaimer given, what would I want to see in such a manager? I think there are specific things involved with managing people, managing projects, and technical leadership. AFAICS, you haven't given a more detailed description of the balance of these for your specific post, so I'll outline my thoughts on each of these areas.

Managing people

It's been my experience that good managers of people tend to do three things well:

• Set realistic expectations.
• Provide adequate resources.
• Get out of the way.

Someone jokes elsewhere in this discussion that you can't just judge managers by how hands-off their approach is and who gives the most perks to their staff, but frankly, I think just doing that would be more successful than the current policy at many organisations!

So in terms of interviewing a potential manager, I would be tempted to go for a practical example to judge their people management skills: describe an imagined next project for their team, and ask them how they'd go about finding out enough about the people they've already got to divide up the work, how they'd deal with any gaps (going into recruitment and team-building ideas if it's relevant), maybe how they'd deal with any apparent surpluses or team conflicts as potential difficulties, how they'd go about briefing the team and getting them started on the work, and how they'd monitor and support their team once it was up and running on the project.

Project management

To me, this aspect has a lot to do with dealing with the people above the manager:

• How would your interviewee make sure they've understood what is required of their team?
• How would they expect themselves and their team to interact with more senior management during the course of the project?
• How would they deal with changing requirements?
• How do they go about planning a schedule, assessing risks and building in slack time, giving reasonable estimates, and so forth?

Again, I'd be tempted to set this in the context of a concrete example or two during the interview, starting with their first thoughts on an initial brief from senior management, perhaps switching to the people management work above next, and coming back later in the interview when some requirements now need to change halfway through the project to see how they'd deal with that.

Technical leadership

If this is relevant for the post in question, I'd be looking for:

• their ability to think about their software design in big picture terms
• whether they see how different areas would interact and how they might map development of related areas onto their team of developers
• how they would ensure adequate testing (Are all 10 staff under them developers, or are some of them testing people? Are there other testers available within your organisation, with whom this team will need to work? What sort of balance between coders and testers does your interviewee prefer to work with, and how would they go about getting it?)
• how they would balance getting the immediate requirements satisfied against long-term flexibility (including getting early prototype work up and running to avoid holding up other team members, while not unduly delaying completing the detailed work for each developer or sub-team)
• their ability to assess the overall merits of different tools, programming languages, etc. that might be used on a project, and how they would go about identifying sensible options and deciding between them at the start of a new project (which is not the same as having guru-level knowledge of multiple programming la

Re:What level?

[fyngyrz]

• Set realistic expectations.
• Provide adequate resources.
• Get out of the way.

If this is all you see a manager doing, then there is no need for them at all. All three of these can be provided at the executive level with the stroke of a pen.

If one requires the manager to have both management skills and (in this case) development skills, then the need to "get out of the way" will go away with a good manager. They can step in when the group being managed needs help, resources, mediation, or course change and they'll understand these requests so they can actually make a qualified decision on the matter at hand.

A good manager can spend five minutes with an already-launched, directed and running team and get a good sense of where they are as compared to where they were, and still not "be in the way." They can also sit down with a tech person for an hour and work through something complex. They'll have the patience, skill and knowledge required to explain this to the top level and keep them off the team's back, from cutting the team's resources, from "featuritis" (and keep the team from it too) and from making unrealistic promises or marketing excursions.

So, just to add my two cents here, a good manager is someone who would make a great tech person, and has management skills. If "getting out of the way" is their idea of management, I have no use for them. For the record, there are only two managers, per se, in the four companies I own, and about 300 employees.

Re:What level?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

If this is all you see a manager doing, then there is no need for them at all.

There is no need for a lot of managers.

However, please remember that those three items were only my criteria for managing people. Managers also tend to have the project management responsibilities I mentioned. Some, but not all, are also technical leads, and I gave further requirements for things I would expect of them as well.

FWIW, I disagree strongly with your assertion that a good manager would necessarily make a great tech person. Some of the best project managers I've worked with had little idea about the technical details of the project, but were good at supporting those who did, liaising between them and customers/senior management, planning budgets, schedules and the like, and leaving the tech guys to get on with tech.

Question One

[pipingguy]

"If I recommend you, how soon can I expect my new raise (nudge-nudge, wink-wink)?"

Get him talking

[tverbeek]

I'd be especially interested in hear each candidate articulate their "management philosophy". While this is likely to lead to a fair amount of buzzword regurgitation, you can discern a bit about what they'd be like to work for from their choice of buzzwords and the connecting tissue that they have to supply themselves to craft a paragraph around them. You also need to know what kind of management style the department/team needs; don't automatically go for the guy who promises the least supervision and the most perks to his staff. Some standard "how would you handle the following scenario..." story problems can also be revealing.

Re:Get him talking

[canUbeleiveIT]

I ask people about their management philosophy, but for people who aren't very reflective, they don't have a lot to say.

This is an excellent point. For whatever reason, many of the really talented managers that I have worked with are simply "naturals." They haven't a clue how to articulate how they do what they do--they just do it. I realize that this probably rubs many /.ers the wrong way, but the smartest and most reflective people aren't necessarily the most effective managers.

One such manager that I used to work with was Patti. She was unremarkable in every way (looks, intelligence, education) and I guarantee that she had never read any "management philosophy" books. But she had a naturally calm and pleasant demeanor, an innate ability to make correct decisions on the fly, and great ability to prioritize. Her honesty and integrity just gave her such an air of authority that she rarely had to use the power of her position to get her people to get the job done. Needless to say, she was always the top-performing manager in her category.

Personally, I would much rather have this type of person than some hot-shot who thinks that he is the smartest guy in the room.

interviewing techniques

[romit_icarus]

To be able to get an interview i'd check on general competence. there's no substitute for prior experience, reference checks.

To get the job, you need to look for alignments on the softer stuff - vision, attitude, personality and motivation levels. There's no quick and dirty way to assess all that. That's why it's an interview, not a questionaire..

What to watch out for ...

[Anonymous Coward]

A good manager has good interpersonal skills and is usually gregarious. Unfortunately a psychopath often does a good job of imitating those characteristics. We hired one and it was a disaster. By the time we figured out what he was and got rid of him he had done a lot of damage to the organization.

The people who study managers are finding that psychopaths are good at getting management jobs but are very bad at running an organization.

My advice is to focus on achievements. How has the candidate done at team building? Really check their references. Ask for the names of some employees you can contact. A boss may miss the fact that someone is a psychopath but an employee never does.

link

2 questions

[CharlieD]

I would (somehow) ask two questions:

1 - ask the candidate: What have you DELIVERED?

Some people like to stay on a project just long enough to include it on their resume, but don't stay around long enough to be productive. You need someone who has delivered an actual product - finished it, not toyed around with it.

2 - ask his/her co-workers on other projects (admittedly difficult to do.): Would you work for/with Mr/Ms X again?

Some people can deliver, but at a horrendous cost in morale, physical and mental health, etc. If he/she destroys or otherwise alienates your people so that they are unlikely to deliver again, you don't want him/her - he/she probably doesn't know what a "team" is.

The usual "did you meet tech requirements, cost, schedule, etc." are a given.

You need to look at the hole picture

[kunakida]

No I didn't misspell "hole", I actually meant it.

Each product team, taken in context (the services and support from the rest of the company),
must be capable of providing skills to handle the whole picture.

Bigger companies provide more support skills for each team.
Bigger product teams provide more internal skills.
The required but missing skills form a hole that must be filled.

The development manager is the one that needs to plug this hole,
either by directly providing innate skills, by asking someone to train or by hiring someone where necessary.
For a manager to hire/fire and manage someone, they should have at least some knowledge of the skill topic,
so they are able to evaluate performance.

If you describe the capabilities of the existing team,
and of the available support (including the responsibilities handled by the product manager),
then a good manager should be able to spit back a list of the missing capabilities,
and a suggestion of how to approach filling the gap.
The specially creative ones, will be able to suggest more cost-effective solutions.
You should be able to ask the manager candidate to describe each of the skills/capabilities they mentioned
in more detail with examples, and to rough estimate (in time and money) of their approach.

The usual holes to consider (depending on the size and organization of the company)
are Q/A, documentation, build/release/configuration management/engineering,
project management, customer delivery and customer support.

One thing the development manager must specially have a handle on is the development process,
its state of affairs, what the missing parts are, and how it should/could be improved.

In a small (10 man) product oriented team, usually the development manager should also act as the technical lead,
and should be responsible for the technical (i.e. non-functional) requirements.
Ask them to describe some of these potential requirements.

Like any other manager, a development manager should
be able to lead their team and negotiate with other teams.
And beyond that, they should be able to present technical explanations.
So look for leadership, negotiation and presentation abilities,
as well as the ability to assess and apply motivation.

Other than this, a development manager should,
(again like any other manager) be a good cog in the reporting hierarchy.
They need to be able to conform to and enforce company policy as it trickles down,
and they need to be able to report issues/status/budget regularly upwards.
They also need to contribute their bit to the overall budget planning.
Check for communication, writing, budgeting and planning skills.
Look in their past history for ability to work within the organization.

In particular, a development manager should be aware
not to download too much of their reporting burden to their developers.
eg. daily 2 hour status meetings + individual developer reports.
Ask them their policy on what developers should be reporting and how often.

Lastly, whether their team already has the capability or not,
a good development manager should be able to contribute something to the overall design discussion.
They should be aware of other solutions out in the market, and of where to find answers.
Check for ability to design and ability to research (specially on the internet)

Role Play...

[GrpA]

A lot of managers and staff underestimate the effectiveness of Role Play as a teaching / learning tool.

Take the manager into a quiet office and tell them that you're going to do some role play to observe their reactions. Give them a scenario... Eg, Employee theft, Trademark Crisis on project, Loss of proprietary information (that they are responsible for) etc.

See how well they respond. Usually, once they get into role play, they'll even assume the correct emotion state. See what they think of. Put them into an emotional problem.

eg, Someone comes in and lets the manager know they accidently gave their friend proprietary information and now it's on the Internet. Give the manager background. Is it a bad employee? Do they have family and how does that affect his decisions? Can he think on his feet to address the issue? How does he balance his commitment to his team with his commitment to his employer? A company hardliner always makes a bad manager, so even though it's the easy answer, it's often not what the company truly wants in a manager.

Make the scenario real enough, eg, he's just taken on the job when this happens, and now it's his mess.

Observing him as he reacts, thinks and determines what to do won't give a complete picture, but it will give an insight into their way of thinking and how they might react in similar circumstances if it did happen. Especially how he copes with this without knowing enough about the company he works for and what questions he asks the interviewer (playing the role of the managers Senior manager or as his 2IC...)

Adjust as required to meet company needs and position role description.

GrpA.

Re:Role Play...

[smurfsurf]

While I generally agree to your post, the focus should not be about how fast and well he can put out fires. Unless the company is on fire and you are looking for someone to manage a crisis.

Theft, crisis and loss should not be what take 95% of his time. Management work consists mostly of repetative, non-exciting things. I would rather like to know how he gives positive and nagative feedback, how he addresses different personality types of his directs, how does his weekly meeting with each direct, how he manages training of his directs, how he does performance reviews, how he runs meetings. How does he do it , what methods does he use? Using role play for these scenarios would probably work well.

Management Style

[Edward Kmett]

It really depends on the tier of management for which you are hiring the manager.

When hiring someone to manage a bunch of programmers, ask them questions about the Mythical Man Month, agile software development, iterations and traditional waterfalls, and try to figure out if he understands the ways programmers think. You're not looking for a coder, but you do want someone who understands the lingo. If the guy sounds off with how he'll never ask his people to do something he couldn't do, perhaps ask why he'd limit his team to the scope of his own abilities. Try to get a feel for his management style, if the team is small, and he is an ace-programmer, maybe he is more of a team lead candidate than a manager candidate. Skills with MS Project, Visio, Powerpoint, etc. are useful. Finding out how comfortable they are summarizing results and presenting material.

If you are hiring for senior management perhaps add questions about earned value management and try to get your head around how they have invested in improving their personnel in the past, and move away from the particulars of managing coders, because job duties will probably extend into other areas.

In either case, management style is a big factor. I am not a huge fan of the screaming-foreman style of management. IMNSHO, a good manager knows when to let his employees own their own deadlines, and how to keep s#!t from flowing downhill; they will go to bat for their team when they are right, and work with them to solve the problem when things go wrong. Asking questions about situations where someone underneath them has been thrown 'under the bus' and how they handled it and how they have handled situations where their estimates were wrong, is a good way to get a feel for their personalities in good and bad situations. A good manager inspires loyalty and doesn't make you dread coming to him with bad news.

I recently left management for academia, and ultimately made the round trip to coding and systems architecture when I received an offer from the best manager I had ever had the pleasure of working with. We had worked together during the dot-com days and moved on to separate fields in the meantime. I mention this to demonstrate that a solid manager can help you retain or acquire your best people and inspires loyalty.

One Question

[triso]

Here's my question:
It is nearing the end of a project and there is a deadline upcoming. The bugs are still coming in faster than the programmers are fixing them. What do you do?