Tailored Interview Role Plays Series: Part 1

Internal Conflicts

I had been involved in a #hypergrowth environment at a SaaS startup that needed rapid #hiring with demanding targets to achieve, customers to satisfy, handle daunting workloads. Since the workload was huge, I designed some interview role plays to assess candidates if they are fit for the roles which were actually based on real life experience. I would like to share some of the role plays that might be useful for you:

Let’s assume Ali is a senior software engineer and Veli is a mid-level software engineer, Veli comes to you and says all the new technology projects are done by Ali and he is upset that he is not growing, how will you approach this situation? Questions are welcome

It depends right, so you need to start unpacking and investigate the situation.

• Ali might be a superstar whom has awesome competence on those technology stack. (That might make him a single point of failure for your organization, which is a massive risk though) Understanding Ali’s role is a key.
• There might be planned financials for the delivery of the projects so that they need to be delivered as fast as possible. (Assuming all other aspects are well, it could be a risk since employees could get offers from abroad with big fat paychecks, is your organization ready for it? 😅 I branch another role play depending on the flow from here which I will share on the next articles for this series, plot will thicken) Understanding context is important, the situation might be more than Ali and Veli, even more than your teams.
• Veli might be a solid performer for a tech stack or specific work however might lack the needed skillset or even an under performer whom does not accept feedback nor accept his/her shortcomings, refuse to work on those shortcomings. (If that is the case how are you on this spot? What could you have done to prevent this?) Understanding Veli’s concerns is important. Is this just the tip of the Iceberg?

This is a quite common internal conflict managers might need to handle. There are couple of approaches might establish a win-win situation for everyone depending the context. Sometimes whatever you do, there will be complications which you might need to contain or manage.

Humans are complex beings with diverse expectations, if you can set expectations right or find an innovative solution works for everyone then, amazing job!