Project Management Job Interviews & Assessments - Arras People: Fill & Download for Free

A friend of mine got rejected despite exceptional coding and management skills.Interviewer : On the cover, it's management. But we want a coder too.Candidate : Yes, I read about the profile.Interviewer : As, in your coding aptitude test, you got a good score and certificates and other interviews speak for your management skills.Candidate : Thank you sir.Interviewer : So, I think you're the right fit. But the project-deadline is a thing we can't compromise upon.Candidate : I understand that.Interviewer : What if as a team leader you can't extract work out of your colleagues, are you ready to put in extra hours of yours?Candidate : Yes sir, If they don't do, I'll surely put in the hours, the project will demand.Interviewer : It might extend sometimes late mid-night because I have seen cases.Candidate : Yes, sir.Interviewer : Ok, sorry you're rejected.Candidate: What?.. Why?Interviewer : Because you just confessed :You're a poor team leader.You're a bad manager of your personal life.You did all fine. But when I threw the job-bone, you got on backfoot-defence.The mistake that he thought he did was, as he told me,“I thought the interview was over, but it was going on.”

I fell asleep during my interview.This was for a Two Sigma onsite interview during my sophomore year, where the onsite process consisted of breakfast, two technical interviews in the morning, lunch, followed by three “HR” (more like behavioral) interviews in the afternoon, going from 9 am until almost 5 pm.Some factors that didn’t help me: I had flown in the night before, setting my alarm for the wrong time (and consequently had 2 minutes to pack my clothes), as well as making it to the San Diego Airport in record time for my 7 am flight (courtesy of my roommate), boarding the plane with 3 minutes left to spare. There was also a thunderstorm in New York when I arrived, so I didn’t reach my hotel until 9 pm, and thus didn’t sleep til like 1 or 2 am EST. Stressful and long travels to New YorkThe first two technical rounds went smoothly, and by some miracle I was able to make it to the HR rounds after lunch, where I was constantly grilled on conceptual concepts of CS, as well as past internships and projects and experiences. These should really be renamed behavioral rounds, but whatever.The first HR round went well, but it was the second HR round where I started to feel a bit tired. At this time, it was about 3 or 4 pm and the afternoon food coma started to hit, as well as lack of coffee, lack of sleep the day prior, being in the office since 9 am, and the PST to EST time zone changes all started to kick in, and I realized my eyes were drooping.I tried to fidget as much as possible, pinching myself, to try and shake myself out of the coma, and slowly managed to make it through the questions about inheritance in Python and what is an abstract class (while getting roasted by my interviewer because apparently the only difference between an abstract class and regular class in Java is the keyword abstract), and made it to the final part of this interview, asking the interviewer questions.This is where everything went downhill, I asked my interviewer about “some of the achievements/accomplishments that he had done while at Two Sigma”, and he proceeded to give me a 5–10 minute speech about everything he had worked on, from scaling the infrastructure to fixing everyone’s bugs and how he had some certification from Oracle that indicates that he is a “Java professional” (clearly I wasn’t since I thought an abstract class differs from a regular Java class because it has to have at least one abstract method/can’t be instantiated), and the passivity of hearing him drone on and on eventually led me to nod off. (I wanted to end it as soon as possible because of how tired I was, but I didn’t want to be rude either and wanted to ask a few questions to see his experience at Two Sigma)(This isn’t me but it’s pretty much what happened)My interviewer woke me up - “Are you sleeping? Get some coffee” before shaking my hand and leaving the interview room.Although the last HR round went well, I was fidgeting yet again to try and make sure I wouldn’t fall asleep again, and I have no idea what that interviewer thought of me, considering I was constantly moving in my effort to stay awake.Once we heard back about interview results, from comparing my results with the other interns I learned that I was the only intern candidate who made it to the HR round of interviews and yet was waitlisted, and my guess is that I had good performances on the first and third rounds, and a terrible performance on the second round, which was why I was waitlisted and not rejected.The main takeaways for me - long onsites really suck. Flying to NY to take an interview the next day is draining. Food comas are and always will be a problem for me. From a Java compilation perspective an abstract class differs from a regular class because of the keyword abstract. And almost missing your flight is a very stressful experience.But more importantly, it’s important to be prepared for interviews not just on the interview preparation side, but also on the physical side - having a healthy sleep schedule, balanced diet would have definitely helped my physical stamina and would’ve helped me stay awake and avoid possible food comas.

I absolutely love it when an interviewee asks well thought out and challenging questions. I like to see that you have done your homework and are asking meaningful questions which will actually add value to our conversation; not some boilerplate nonsense.Here are my favorites:How do you define and measure success in this role? Can you tell me what makes the rockstar on your team stand out?What are the biggest challenges the team will work on over the next 12-18 months? What is the business impact of those projects?What metric should I use to assess and correct myself in my first 30/60/90 days?I’m sure you get plenty of job offers; what are the top 3 reasons you’re still here?What is the biggest missing skill in the team today? What is the one thing a candidate can bring to the team that will serve as a multiplicative factor in the team’s success?And my most favorite of them all…What is the one thing Albus Dumbledore could have done differently as a leader?What are some good questions you like to ask your interviewer? Leave a comment below.Update: Since so many folks DMed asking for this after my last post,What is the one thing Albus Dumbledore could have done differently as a leader?I feel Dumbledore’s biggest flaw was his quest for absolute power. Whether it was the duels with Grindelwald, the complex multi decade war against Voldemort, the constant one-upping the Minister of Magic, the quest for the Hallows, the control of the Philosopher’s Stone, the dozens of times he simple stood by when he could easily have nipped a problem in the bud, Dumbledore in some ways reminds me of the USA, where he lets a problem grow large enough before tacking it so that he gets the most glory for doing so.He also lacked trust and did a poor job delegating to his team. A good leader will share their vulnerabilities and leverage the strength of their team to accomplish the best results. Dumbledore always tried to make himself indispensable; a sign of an insecure leader.Ironically, he’s also the man who said this, almost as if he knew and was ashamed of himself for not being able to live up to his own ideals:“It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it.”In case we haven’t met before, I’m Rohan Kamath.Thank you for reading. I hope I could help you learn today. :)