How to Ace Engineering Manager Interviews
Learn the exact formula to be memorable in EM interviews and secure your next offer!
Intro
Interviewing for an Engineering Manager role (and beyond) is vastly different than interviewing for an IC role.
A lot of times the feedback you get is pretty vague and it’s hard to point out exactly where you made a mistake.
The challenge with such interviews is to showcase a good mix of leadership, communication and problem-solving abilities + a good foundation in engineering principles.
Lucky for us, we have Alexander Kliotzkin with us today. He is sharing in-depth where most EMs go wrong + the exact formula you should take to ace your EM interviews!
Introducing Alexander Kliotzkin
Alexander Kliotzkin is an experienced tech leader with 16+ years in the engineering industry. He is a Director Of Software at Infineon and also a Career & Leadership Coach.
Together with Uzair Khan, Engineering Manager at Stripe, they are teaching a popular course called: Acing Engineering Manager Interviews, where they help EMs break through the interview process and land their Engineering Manager offer.
Check the course and use my code ENGLEADER10 for 10% off. The next cohort starts July 12.
1. The Dos and Don’ts when it comes to EM Interviews
Picture this: You're sitting across from a hiring manager at your dream company. They ask, "Tell me about a time you made an unpopular decision."
Your mind races. You think about changing the team's deployment process or postponing a feature launch. You start explaining the technical details and your reasoning.
The interviewer nods politely, takes notes, moves on. You leave feeling confident about your solid, honest answers.
Weeks later: rejection email.
What went wrong?
You didn't actually answer the question they were asking.
The Problem With How Most EMs Prepare
After coaching dozens of engineering leaders through interviews, I've identified a fundamental flaw in how most candidates approach EM interviews.
They treat it like a coding interview with predictable patterns:
Question[X] → Answer[X]
Have a STAR-formatted response ready
Practice until it feels "correct"
But this approach does not prepare you for questions you haven’t seen before, and it misses the deeper intent behind behavioral questions.
When an interviewer asks about an "unpopular decision," they're not interested in the decision itself. They're probing your ability to navigate resistance, build consensus, and maintain team cohesion under pressure.
Most candidates miss this completely. They look at questions from their own perspective instead of putting themselves in the interviewer's shoes. The interviewer cares less about when things go right, and more about how you handle situations when things go wrong.
Think about it from the hiring manager's perspective: They're inheriting someone else's problems. They need to know you can handle pushback from stakeholders, navigate technical debt decisions, and maintain team morale during difficult periods.
That's why every behavioral question is really asking: "How will you handle the messy reality of this role?"
Why EM Interviews Are Different
The EM role is fundamentally different from IC work, and so is the hiring process. As an IC, technical competence is your primary currency. As an EM, it's about translating business needs to technical execution while growing people and managing complexity.
While you'll still face technical rounds (system design, possibly DSA), these are just filters – minimum bars you must meet. The real decision happens in behavioral interviews, which typically account for ~80% of the hiring criteria.
What are hiring managers actually looking for?
Reliability → Can you be counted on when things get tough? Do you follow through on commitments?
Communication → Can you influence without authority? Do you translate complex technical concepts for non-technical stakeholders?
Emotional Intelligence → Do you understand what motivates people? Can you read team dynamics?
Resilience → How do you handle pressure? Do you stay calm during incidents or crises?
Extreme Ownership → Will you do whatever’s necessary to deliver? Even if it’s outside of your scope?
Self-Initiative → Can you untangle fuzzy requirements & directions and not simply wait for instructions?
Autonomy → Can you make the right decisions without constant approval?
These aren't just nice-to-have qualities → they're essential for the role.
An EM who lacks emotional intelligence will struggle to retain talent. One without resilience will burn out during the first major incident. Without extreme ownership, they'll lose credibility with both their team and stakeholders.
You need to demonstrate these characteristics through convincing stories, not just claim you possess them. That’s how you land an EM offer.
Why Most EMs Get Rejected
The common failure patterns I see repeatedly:
Under-preparation → Many candidates assume their experience speaks for itself. They show up thinking, "I've been an EM for 3 years, I should be fine." But without preparation, even experienced leaders give rambling, unfocused answers.
IC mindset → They prepare for an IC interview, focusing on technical solutions rather than leadership decisions. They talk about the code they wrote instead of the team they guided.
Missing the intent → They focus on surface-level details instead of leadership lessons. When asked about conflict resolution, they spend 80% of their time explaining the technical disagreement and 20% on how they managed the people involved.
Generic "we" language → They constantly say "we decided" or "our team did" without clarifying their specific role. Interviewers are left wondering: What did YOU actually do?
Perfectionism trap → They only share stories with perfect outcomes, which makes them seem either dishonest or lucky. Real leadership involves navigating failures and learning from them.
Rigid script mentality → They memorize answers but can't adapt when asked follow-up questions or variations they haven't practiced.
2. The EM Interview Formula
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