The Tech Interview Behind the Scenes: Sevdalin Zhelyazkov

The Tech Interview Behind the Scenes is an HRLabs series.
Let’s take a look behind the scenes of the technical interview process from the interviewers' perspective.
Our goal is to provide candidates with valuable tips and recommendations directly from professionals who conduct interviews for various technical roles.

“A candidate will rarely stand out if feeling in a hostile environment.”, shares Sevdalin Zhelyazkov, software engineer at international product company.

Tell us more about your career path.

My career began as a Front-end Engineer.

Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to gain experience in both large and small companies, as well as in a startup where I joined from the very beginning and spent a little over four years. I held various roles and responsibilities, the most significant of which was as an Engineering Manager. In that role, I led a cross-functional team, managed processes, oversaw the successful delivery of products, development plans, and the technical feasibility of product goals.

For the past four years, I have been actively working with Scrum and Agile, helping organizations improve or completely transform the way they approach software development in an effective manner within a complex environment full of uncertainties.

Curiosity and my desire to bring positive change to the environment I’m in, regardless of my position, are the driving forces that have propelled me forward and brought me the greatest success and satisfaction.

As a candidate, have you had any strange interviews? What about interviews that impressed you?

I haven’t often been in the role of a candidate, but from the experience I’ve gained over the past year, I’ve had more strange interviews than impressive ones. Some of the reasons for this are gaps in recruitment processes and approaches, such as:

• Lack of clarity about the process from start to finish,
• Failure to meet commitments and agreed deadlines,
• Generic feedback after a multi-step process,
• Complete lack of feedback,
• A testing attitude towards the candidate rather than a partnership approach,
• Lack of depth in communication and assumptions.

The last two points are particularly detrimental, as both sides lose the opportunity to achieve the real goals of the interview process: to discover how they can be mutually beneficial in the context of the organization and identify the candidate’s strengths that can contribute to its success and progress.

Of course, I’ve also had very pleasant experiences with great companies. What stands out in these cases is a holistic approach to candidate evaluation, curiosity, and a willingness to collaborate on the part of the interviewers. The result is a meaningful interaction that leaves an excellent impression regardless of the outcome.

What skills and qualities do you look for in a candidate? How can a candidate stand out during the interview?

Before we get to looking for skills and qualities during an interview, we must first ensure that we, as interviewers, have created favorable conditions for them to emerge.

A candidate is unlikely to stand out if they feel they are in a hostile environment, which even has its biological justification. It is the interviewer’s responsibility to create the conditions in which the candidate can showcase their potential and abilities.

If our aim is to collaborate with the candidate in our mutual process, rather than to test them, chances are we’ll achieve the result we’re striving for.

As for qualities, to me, the most important is for the person to be open about what they know and what they don’t, to have a willingness to grow, and to be able to ask the right questions.

The latter is something that can make a candidate stand out significantly, as it lies at the heart of solving any problem. I’ve seen many technically strong programmers with low added value because they don’t ask questions. The result is wasted effort and resources going in the wrong direction.

What questions do you typically ask in technical interviews? Do you have specific tasks or problems that you often use to assess candidates?

We usually start with a short practical task with a time limit.

Here, fully completing the task is not always a guarantee of success. Equally important are the approach, the way of thinking, and the choices the candidate makes given the limited time and the end goal.

The theoretical part consists of questions of varying difficulty to gain a better understanding of the candidate’s knowledge boundaries. What questions are asked, how they are asked, and whether they are asked at all depend on the flow and dynamics of the interview. The main goal is to create an environment where the candidate can perform at their best and has the opportunity to showcase their strengths. This wouldn’t be possible if we conducted the interview in a rigid, templated manner.

Contrary to common beliefs, I would say that unanswered questions provide us with information that we couldn’t obtain from questions answered correctly. It’s important to assess how a candidate approaches something they don’t know or understand.

"Will they try to cover it up? How will they handle the situation?

The answer to these questions will be indicative of the candidate’s performance in real-world conditions, where we face the unknown daily in an increasingly complex environment."

How important are good communication skills for a candidate? How do they impact the overall interview?

Good communication skills can be a catalyst for an engineer's development, but they are not enough.

There is a balance between technical and communication skills, which can vary depending on the position a person is applying for.

For example, for positions from 'Senior' and above, the ability to communicate effectively is critical for successfully fulfilling the responsibilities associated with the role.

Expectations for a 'Junior,' however, are usually much lower from an organizational perspective, with the focus primarily on the technical aspects of the job. If they already have good communication skills, it helps them grow much faster, as they are able to gather the necessary information from their environment more effectively. Of course, even if this is not the case, their manager is responsible for their development and growth in this area.

How important is cultural fit when making a hiring decision? How do you assess whether a candidate will fit well into the team?

A good company culture and cultural compatibility are at the core of building strong and sustainable teams. The responsibility is significant, as mistakes in this regard can have serious consequences for the stability and productivity, both at the team level and the organizational level.

Compromises in this area are costly, although probably everyone has witnessed such situations and can provide at least one example.

During the interview, the assessment is formed indirectly – based on our observations throughout the entire interview, and directly – through specific questions aimed at checking for the presence or absence of certain desired and undesired behavioral patterns.

Real-life conflict situations from practice are often used, which, in addition to cultural compatibility, reveal the candidate's ability to handle the issues they would actually encounter in their daily work.

What are the most common mistakes candidates make during an interview? What advice would you give candidates on how to prepare for an interview?

Imagine you go to the market for apples and pears, but the vendor starts offering you all sorts of fruits and vegetables, among which they also mention the ones you’re looking for.

How would you feel in this situation?

They’re wasting your time, and at certain moments, you might wonder if they even have what you’re looking for. You might even get frustrated in the end.

The same goes for the interview – the interviewer is the buyer, looking for a specific product, service, or solution, and the candidate is the seller, who, to be successful, needs to understand and present what is being sought, not everything they have.

Without emphasizing the possible mistakes a candidate might make, here are some guidelines to focus on:

• Read the job listing carefully and understand what the company is looking for,
• Present your experience convincingly, concisely, and only what is relevant to the search,
• Review the technologies mentioned in the listing – what is not practiced daily tends to be forgotten,
• Have examples of challenges you've faced and problems you’ve solved,
• Be composed, balanced, and focused on the meaning of the questions being asked.

What advice would you give to candidates who want to improve their technical skills? Are there any resources you would recommend?

The skill that will help 100% of candidates improve their technical skills is learning to ask and answer the question 'WHY.'

Acquiring theoretical knowledge through practical application is important, but at the core always lies the need to explain to ourselves how things work and why we do what we do.

Share more about the best (or worst) interviews you've conducted.

In practice, I’ve been fortunate to work with great recruitment professionals, so I haven’t had many bad interviews, except for one candidate who went to pick up a package from a courier during the interview.

For me, bad interviews are most often the result of inconsideration, unrealistic expectations, and unacceptable behavior.

Unsuccessful interviews due to failing in the theoretical or practical part are still good interviews – for both the candidates and the company. On one hand, candidates (at least with me) receive constructive feedback and guidance on what they can improve. On the other hand, the company has made the right choice, even though it doesn't result in a new hire.

How do you evaluate a candidate during an interview—based solely on their theoretical knowledge, or is their approach to solving a problem/task more important to you? What other factors do you consider when making a decision?

Theoretical knowledge is an important component in forming the final assessment, but it is not the only or the most important one.

The approach to solving the case/task gives us a clearer understanding of the candidate’s ability to overcome problems, and the way in which they do this is crucial for success in the role.

There are also a number of other factors that carry weight depending on the context in which they are considered – position level, budget, company time constraints, and others. For example, depending on the position level, as discussed above, we might compromise on communication skills; based on budget and time constraints, we might even compromise on theoretical and practical skills, investing in the candidate long-term by training them internally within the company. This is the more advantageous scenario for candidates.

In other cases, we may have a large number of strong applications, which makes the competition high. It’s good for candidates to know that they rarely have full awareness of these conditions of their application, even if it’s excellent, and that not every rejection is a testament to poor performance.