How to Do Team-Match Correctly

Interviewing in big-tech is often not team-specific. The current process at?FAANGMULA?is to clear the generic interview loop and then do a team match with multiple teams.

It's a great process, allowing candidates to learn about various teams before committing to one. But in my view, almost every candidate does the team match incorrectly.

During team-match discussion, every candidate exclusively asks about the team's projects and the tech stack they are using.?That's what I call a project match.

And, project-match?should not be the ONLY thing?a candidate should do during team-match discussion. The work/projects are part of the team and not the team itself.

The keyword to pay attention to is?"TEAM"?in team-match.

A team consists of people, i.e., a manager and team members working together on projects. In other words, a team match should be a combination of project-match and people-match.

Before we dive into the people-match aspect of the team-match process, let's examine the dangers of doing only project-match.

Why doing only project-match is dangerous?

A team can be working on a specific project during team-match discussion. By the time the candidate joins the team, the project can be:

• Completed and moved to the maintenance stage.
• Moved to a different team due to organizational restructuring.
• Deprecated as business needs may have changed.
• Some other engineer may have started leading it.

We know that projects are ephemeral. Then why focus 100% of the discussion on them. Why not focus on things that are likely to stay constant, i.e., the people.

The People Match ??

A team is a group of people working together on projects. Over time, projects change, but people remain.

During the people-match part of the team-match discussion, try to learn about people on the team.

Usually, the managers do the first team-match rounds. During that discussion, try to learn about:

• Their management style.
• Ask about the structure of the team and opportunities to mentor and get mentored.
• Inquire about the team roadmap and people growth.
• Learn about the stakeholders, sister teams, other engineering leaders/PMs that the team interacts with.
• Learning how the manager thinks about team member growth is a better criterion than a specific project.
• Learning what the manager thinks the team will be doing one year out is better than current projects.
• Learning about people within and outside the team will help identify signals if you would like your future colleagues. Will you have an opportunity to learn from them?

Now you may say,?"We have only 30 minutes during team-match. How am I supposed to ask all these questions?"

I agree that 30-minutes is not enough time to discuss all of the above topics. But, it's long enough to ask initial questions if the discussion is structured correctly.

Structuring Team-Match Call

Break down the 30-minute call into 3 x10 minute intervals.

• First 10 minutes, talk about what you (as a candidate) are looking for and learn about team projects at a high level. Refrain from jumping into project technical details.
• Next 10 minutes, learn about the manager and their management/leadership style. Learn about how they grow a new team member.
• Last 10 minutes, ask about the team, i.e., team members, structure, experience level, expertise/specializations, project/people ratio, and how successfully/frequently the team meets their goals.

The above split is 1/3rd project-match and 2/3rd people match.?Doing the above split should give enough signals if you want to have a follow-up conversation or not.

If you feel that the manager seems honest, projects seem interesting, and teams feel high-output, pick them for an additional round of discussion. And for the following discussion, ask to meet a senior engineer on the team.

Finally, I would say, if possible, schedule a lunch/happy hour with the team before joining it. You will learn how the team interacts when not in the office. Don’t confuse this with being work buddies. The goal here is to understand team dynamics when the environment changes.

And that's it. I can't emphasize enough that people-match should be the essential criteria for a team match. It is a tedious exercise but worth it.

If you are not at the team-match phase yet and are still interviewing, you may find the following blog posts helpful:

• Don’t Do Interviews, Do Discussions! (#1 on HackerNews)
• How to Find the Job You L??ve
• How to Win at Interviewing

Note: The views and opinions shared here are my own and not reflective of my employers.