Stack Overflow Interview Tips From Recruiters
💎 Prepare to apply to Stack Overflow with these interview tips from the company’s recruiters!
Watch the video to the end to learn about the application process and what will make you a successful candidate!
📼 Ace your Stack Overflow interview with some great tips and tricks from Amy Roberts, Principal Technical Recruiter, and Joyita Bandyopadhyay, Talent Acquisition Consultant at Stack Overflow. They’ll take you through Stack Overflow’s values and culture and help you with some insights for the interview process.
📼 The first Stack Overflow interview tip relates to the very first step of applying: submitting your resume. Start by reviewing the job description and confirm your resume includes the required skills and experience. If you're on the fence about applying or perhaps don't have the years of experience or proficiency noted on the job posting, Amy encourages you to apply anyways! “Please just add a cover letter detailing what makes you a unique candidate. Tell us more about what makes you, you,” Amy advises. If the specific position isn't the right next step for your career, the recruiting team at Stack Overflow may have another, more suitable posting available or something opening up in the future that might be a fit. Oh, and good news: your resume won't go through a bot. So share your personality in your profile to give the recruiters a sense of who you are.
📼 More Stack Overflow interview tips from their recruiters: At Stack Overflow, you'll work primarily with C+, ASP.NET, and Microsoft SQL Server, with supporting technology such as Redis, TypeScript, and Elasticsearch. As a company dedicated to increasing developer knowledge, Stack will give you the resources and support you need to develop mastery in your craft. And remember, soft skills are just as important as tech skills! Successful candidates will have critical thinking, teamwork, and strong problem-solving and communication skills.
Stack Overflow Interview Tips - Take a Deep Dive Into the Company
Prior to the interview, Joyita encourages you to explore: What motivates you? What excites you? And align your answers with what Stack Overflow has on offer. Do check out the company website and its profile on PowerToFly, The Muse, and Comparably, to get more information about their wonderful benefits and inclusive work culture!
🧑💼 Are you interested in joining Stack Overflow? They have open positions! To learn more, click here.
Get to know Amy and Joyita
Amy is an experienced Full Life Cycle Recruiter with a solid track record of building and maintaining client and candidate relationships. She has a demonstrated ability to self-manage multiple positions by sourcing, screening, qualifying, coordinating interviews, negotiating, and closing candidates. She also possesses strong expertise managing large staffing projects with quick delivery dates. Joyita is a highly dependable HR professional with strong multicultural and multinational experience across the USA and APAC region (Singapore, Thailand, Australia & India) as Talent Acquisition Specialist / HR Systems / HR Business Partner. Adept at working collaboratively with multiple stakeholders, she’s known for being a self-starter who delivers best-in-class HR partnering to accomplish business goals with a positive employee experience. If you are interested in a career at Stack Overflow, you can connect with Amy and Joyita on LinkedIn!
More About Stack Overflow
Founded in 2008, Stack Overflow is on a mission to empower the world to develop technology through collective knowledge. More than 100 million people come to Stack Overflow’s public platform every month, making it one of the 50 most-visited websites in the world. Their private knowledge-sharing and collaboration offering, Stack Overflow for Teams, is transforming how people work. In addition, their Reach & Relevance products help companies build their brand (Talent) and reach the world’s largest audience of developers and technologists (Advertising), including through Collectives™ on Stack Overflow. Joining Stack Overflow means helping developers and technologists at life and at work and the chance to collaborate with a smart, talented, and supportive team.
9 Ways to Grow Your Career Within a Company With Stack Overflow’s Brittany Boardman
Brittany Boardman went to her first interview with Stack Overflow without expecting much.
"I'm not technical, I'm not an engineer. And I wasn't necessarily looking [for a new job]. But Stack just blew me away," says Brittany of her first exposure to the company behind the world's largest and most trusted software developer and technologist community. "The people I met that day seemed like they genuinely liked coming to work. There was this cohesive belief in what the company was doing. I was converted pretty quickly after that interview—Stack was somewhere I wanted to join."
That's exactly what Brittany did. She first joined as a Senior Account Executive, parlaying her sales and consulting experience into partnering with Stack's clients, and then grew into a lead for that team. Earlier this year, she became the Enterprise Account Executive on Stack's newest product, Teams, which solves the problem of how to manage and share knowledge across an organization.
We sat down with Brittany to learn more about her different roles at Stack and how she continued to find exciting growth opportunities without leaving her company. She shared insight that's applicable across career stages and industries, and we're excited to bring it to you here.
9 ways to grow your career…
…as an interviewee
All of the career growth advice in the world won't help much if you're not at a company that encourages its employees to succeed and supports them as they work towards their goals.
Brittany has worked in finance in New York, been a consultant in Denver, and is now working remotely for Stack from her hometown of North Carolina. She knows her way around an interview process, and her first three tips are about how to use interviews to figure out if a company is a place where you could build a successful career.
1. Talk to a peer. "Even if it's not part of the hiring process, reach out to someone on LinkedIn," she recommends. "They can tell you whether it's an organization that helps to promote and encourage mobility within their employees."
2. Ask about growth paths. Brittany suggests asking the hiring manager directly about trajectories for the role you're considering. Do employees stay in that role for years? Move into management? Transfer laterally to different teams? You don't have to follow one of those set paths, but knowing that people do move up and out is a good indicator.
3. Determine whether your would-be manager will help remove obstacles or just add to them. When Brittany was interviewing for her current role at Stack, she was looking for two things: first, that her future manager had done the job before and knew how to coach her, and second, that she was willing to "roll up her sleeves, have a conversation, strategize, and remove blockers to success." "I probably would not have joined the team if I didn't sense those two things about her," reflects Brittany.
…no matter what your role is
Brittany's latest transition at Stack helping large enterprises bring in Stack Overflow for Teams. It combines her love for collaborating with internal and external stakeholders, strategizing to solve CTO- and CIO-level problems, and being true partners to her clients.
That role didn't drop into her lap, though. As she learned more about herself, her skills, and her company's needs, she saw there was an opportunity and went for it. "There was that question of, 'What do you want to do when you get up in the morning, when your feet hit the floor?' And it's exactly what I'm doing now. I'm really happy. It almost feels like I've created a new job," explains Brittany.
Here's how she recommends you do the same:
4. Ask people you admire about their habits. "What helped me ramp up really quickly was identifying people that were having success and what was driving their success," says Brittany, who found Stack's open culture to be one where people were happy to have those conversations.
5. Don't worry too much about timelines—focus instead on getting managerial support. Brittany's first promotion came pretty early in her Stack tenure, and she wouldn't have gone for it without the encouragement of her manager. Why? It seemed too soon. "I think a few folks were like, 'Oh, that's a big thing. People tend to wait a year before they go out for that role.' But I had a really great manager who encouraged me. 'What's the worst that could happen?' she said. 'They say no and they know that you're interested,'" remembers Brittany. In the end, they didn't say no, and her manager continued to support her even as she moved to a new team.
6. Find mentors. "People want to tell you about how they've been able to overcome something," says Brittany, who has reached out to her company's CRO as well as a few director-level managers to get their perspective on her career. "Just ask!" she says.
…if you want to move into management
While she's not a manager yet, Brittany is interested in stepping into that kind of role at some point, so she's preparing for it now. Here's what she's investing in and where she recommends you do the same:
7. Understand your industry. "You want to really understand the context that you're working in. What's going on in the market? How are things changing? How might that impact our products or clients?" says Brittany, who notes that having that industry knowledge helps with strategizing and bigger-picture thinking down the line.
8. Build relationships across your organization. In her new role, Brittany has to collaborate with people across her company, from security to product. By making those personal connections and building up her understanding of how their teams and processes work, she's preparing for bigger collaborative efforts: "Having that ability to go talk to finance or legal is crucial when moving up into management."
9. Study the managers you admire. It sounds obvious, but it's vital, says Brittany. "I've been fortunate to have some really good [managers] here. And I think, 'What do I like about them? Is it their communication style? How they set clear expectations?' I'm learning from what I appreciate as an individual contributor," she says.
If you're interested in working with Brittany at Stack Overflow, check out their open roles (and start putting her tips to use!).
