Looking to get into DevRel or need ideas to uplevel your candidacy? I’ve been a Developer Advocate for several years at different companies and have been on both sides of the interview table. Here are my top tips to help you win that offer for your next dream Dev Advocate/Evangelist role.
1. Research, Research, Research
Getting to know a little about the job and company is an obvious but very important step. Be sure to thoroughly read the role requirements, check out the company’s website, recent blogs, major announcements, listing on Crunchbase and reviews from Glassdoor. Also make use of your own network and try to find someone who has first hand experience with the company.
As you do this, try to answer the following:
- Will the team be a good fit for you?
- What’s the health of the company?
Finding a place that challenges you while being a comfortable workplace will reap you both health benefits and future job opportunities.
If the company is at a very early stage or are experiencing financial challenges then it may be difficult for them to support equipment or service costs.
Good microphones, lighting and camera equipment help improve the quality of your webinars and online conference presentations. Video editing tools, access to premium royalty free images, videos, and music can also help elevate video assets you may produce. Sponsoring and/or attending conferences are also costly.
Even if you don’t mind picking up the tab on these, or are very resourceful, at some point you’ll probably want a reasonable raise. Make sure the company will be able to afford that.
2. Prepare Good Answers
Because no one can read your mind (yet), you’ll be asked a lot of questions by quite a few people. Fortunately, most of them will probably ask the same general questions. Preparing fully fleshed out answers ahead of time will have great mileage.
- Role related questions. From your research earlier you should have a pretty good handle on what type of work you’ll be getting yourself into. If not, put that in the list for the next section. Otherwise, look for any requirements where you fall short. Prepare answers on how you plan to or how you already overcome them.
- Brush up language skills. It’s impossible to be 100% prepared for every possible technical question regarding any software language. To help focus your preparation, start off by looking up the “best” interview questions for the specific languages the role requires. This will help cover the basics. Afterwards, take a deep dive into the company’s products, SDKs and APIs and re-familiarize yourself with any structures, algorithms, and third-party packages that would be needed to successfully deploy those products. Any practical technical interviewer should be focusing on these areas of a languge.
- Stay up with the news. Chances are you’ve already subscribed to some podcasts, video, and social media streams regarding tech news in your areas of interest. Now is the time to kick it up a notch. Learn as much as possible about the Company’s tech space. What events were they recently at and will be attending next, what major news from them and competitors was recently announced, and what content did they just recently release? Knowing what’s happening right now inspires confidence that you have a pulse on the trends that most affect the company.
3. Prepare Good Questions
Everyone who interviews you will inevitably ask, “Do you have any questions?”. DevRel is a highly social role compared to straight up engineering, you’ll need to be comfortable working with lots of different teams and people if you want to be successful.
If you don’t have any questions to ask your interviewers you will likely come across as being uninterested or overly passive for such a role, even if all your questions were actually answered during the course of the conversation. Don’t get caught unprepared, make a list of special questions for every person you will likely speak with:
- HR / Talent Specialist
- Potential Boss
- Potential Teammates
- The CEO / C-Level leading the team you’ll be on
Research their LinkedIn profiles, personal blogs or any other content they’ve recently produced. This will give you some things to draw questions from and may give you some insight as to their interests, and possibly subjects to avoid entirely.
Open ended questions that have lots of follow up potential are best. That way your questions are easy to remember and allows you to pull on interesting threads as they come up. Questions can be about existing experiences or even predictions, like:
- What do you like most about working at [the company]?
- What are the top priorities for this role in the next [3/6/12] months?
- What are the biggest company challenges that I can help with?
My favorite question to ask interviewers in leadership positions is “Who or what company are role models for you?” The answer to this can be hugely insightful, giving you a good idea of their vision for the company and what the company culture may be like behind the curtain.
4. Use the Product
Presumably any company needing Dev Advocates has a developer centric product such as APIs or platform SDKs. If they have a free trial or free tier to use; sign up and give it a test drive.
If you really want to leave an impression, build a small demo using their product. You can do this at any stage, but I recommend doing this after you’ve spoken with someone on the team you’d be joining. By then you’ll know if a technical assessment is required. These assessments usually involve building a sample app using their APIs or SDKs. Unless your demo is dramatically different than this, it might not add much to your candidacy consideration.
If they don’t have a technical assessment, then you should have a good sense of what projects are at the top of their to-do list. Obviously, you’ll want to tailor your demo to align with this list as much as possible. The demo doesn’t have to be any of those projects specifically, but should definitely showcase your ability to help with them.
Generally I reserve building custom demos like this for companies at the very top of my interest list. These take a lot of effort and can quickly become pretty involved. But every time I’ve done this, I’ve gotten an offer. Your mileage will no doubt vary, but creating a demo that your interviewer can later reference is nothing but a plus, both for your interview prospects and technical growth.
5. Make a Video
Some companies I’ve worked for give technical assessments, and the candidates who sent along videos to explain their answers were always at the top of my list.
These videos don’t have to be professionally done either, just your voice over a screen recording as you walk through your project.
Not only do these videos provide insights into your thought process and existing skillsets, they showcase how you’ll come across when doing this for the company. Presenting at conferences, webinars, and workshops are all common asks for an experienced advocate. If you don’t have recent recordings of doing this, then I highly recommend creating these videos.
Conclusion
Finally, be professional and courteous regardless of how the interview(s) go. Thank everyone for their time and follow up with your primary point of contact within 24 hours, if they haven’t reached out to you beforehand.
Feel free to ask for an estimate on when an answer will be provided but I personally never ask this. Instead, ask what the next steps are or what other information you can provide to show you’re still interested in moving forward.
These are my top tips for anyone looking to make great impressions when interviewing for DevRel positions. If you have any great recommendations I missed, post them in the comments to spread the word.
Thank you and good luck in your next interview!
