Hiring Technical People

Behavior-Description Questions from Agile 2006

August 14th, 2006

A few weeks ago at the “Hiring for an Agile Team” session, the group generated a number of behavior-description questions. I promised I would post them, so here they are:

• “Tell me about a time you made a mistake.”
• Using the context of shipping/releasing a product late: “What did you change?” (Notice the past tense of “did.” When interviewing for an agile team, the group expected that the candidate would take some initiative for change. And, by using the word “did,” the candidate is less likely to take this as a hypothetical question.)
• “Tell me about a time you/your team changed course.”
• “Tell me about a time you performed another role on a project.” (looking for people who are comfortable roaming around a team, doing what needs to be done.)
• “Tell me about a time you worked with people on their projects.” (Looking for people who can coach.)
• “Tell me about a time you made a difference.”
• “Tell me about a time your daily priorities changed.”

There were tons of other great questions. If you participated in that session (or even if not!) and you have some questions you have found have helped you looking for people to fit into an Agile team, please leave a comment here.

Entry Filed under: agile hiring, interview question