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🙂 Final and culture-fit interviews

Congrats! You’re on the final step of your interview process, and the last opportunity to do everything in your control to secure that dream job.

Succeeding in your developer career involves more than just technical skills. It also requires great people skills, especially the more senior you are in your role. A company wants to ensure that whomever they hire will align with and contribute to the company culture.

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Download this resource to help you prepare for in-person and culture-fit interviews.

Prepare to answer questions speaking specifically to who you are, what you want from your career, how you work best and your previous collaboration experience.

Examples of questions you should prepare to answer​

  • What are you looking for in your next role?
  • Tell me about a time when you had a conflict with a co-worker.
  • How do you tackle challenges? Name a difficult challenge you faced while working on a project, how you overcame it, and what you learned.
  • What frustrates you?
  • What are the most interesting projects you have worked on and how might they be relevant to this company's environment?
  • What does your best day of work look like?
  • What is the most constructive feedback you have received in your career?
  • Tell me about a time you met a tight deadline.

Preparing to answer these kinds of questions will ensure you’re still evaluating the opportunity based on your original job search goals. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the excitement of getting an employment offer, but you want to accept an offer that address why you set out to look for a new job.

If there are major differences between the opportunity and your priorities you may end up leaving the job soon after joining. Leaving a role within a year after joining could require an explanation in your next interview process as companies sometimes view it as job hopping.

Hiring managers tend to view job hopping in a negative light since they want to retain the talent they’re about to hire. As it takes time for a new employee to contribute meaningfully to a company’s mission, hiring managers will do everything in their power to ensure they’re hiring developers that stay in their job for at least one to two years.

Of course, there are understandable reasons you’d leave a role, but by trying your best to align your priorities with your next opportunity, you can avoid unnecessary short stints at companies.

Questions to ask the company to evaluate the culture​

Company mission and product​

  • How do employees contribute to the long-term plans of the company?
  • What’s the approach when someone makes a big mistake?

Growth​

  • If I wanted to change careers within the company, for example from frontend to backend, how would you help me with that?
  • Apart from a learning budget, what other initiatives are there to help people learn?

Culture and team​

  • Do you work in an Agile manner? How?
  • What kind of team events are there?
  • What does collaboration within the team look like?
  • How does the team bond?

Working hours​

  • How many hours of meetings are there per week?
  • Do you expect me to work overtime or during weekends?

Remote work​

  • What does your work-from-home policy look like?
  • Are there any days when I need to go into the office?
  • What does the company offer for a home set-up?

Following up with the hiring manager​

After the interview, send the interviewer a follow-up message thanking them for their time throughout the process. If you’re truly excited about the opportunity, don’t feel shy to tell them you would accept an employment offer if they make one. Here is a template you could use:

Get your template!

Hello [hiring manager’s name],

Thank you for the interview today. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know more about [company name] and this opportunity. I wanted you to know that I would be very excited to accept a potential offer.

Please let me know if you need anything else from me to make your decision.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards, [your name]

Being direct about this may feel uncomfortable at first, but it can really impress a company to see how excited you are.