Talent Development and Succession Planning Questions
Systematically developing people's careers and building bench strength: career pathing, growing future leaders, and succession planning so the organization is resilient. Covers identifying high-potential talent, sponsoring growth, and building a leadership pipeline. Longer-horizon and more programmatic than one-on-one mentoring.
A high-potential engineer's work quality has dropped over the last two sprints. Outline your approach to diagnose the root causes, short-term support actions (coaching, workload adjustments), how to set performance expectations, and objective criteria you would use to determine if they return to their prior trajectory.
You have a mid-level engineer who wants to become a senior engineer in 12 months. Draft a 6–12 month development plan that includes specific technical and leadership objectives, measurable milestones, a mentorship and shadowing structure, and the cadence and artifacts you will use to track progress and make promotion-ready evidence visible.
You are onboarding a newly promoted engineering manager. Describe a 90-day onboarding plan that focuses specifically on building their ability to develop talent on their team. Include key meetings, recommended trainings, mentoring, deliverables, and checkpoints you would use to assess their progress.
Design parallel career ladders for individual contributors (IC) and managers for your organization. Explain how you will ensure parity between tracks in terms of seniority and compensation, and provide guidance you'd give an engineer deciding whether to pursue a management path or remain an IC.
Deliver a 12-month development roadmap for a newly promoted engineering manager who is accountable for team growth and delivery. Include quarterly objectives, essential skills training, key milestones such as hiring and promotions, feedback systems (1:1s, skip-levels), and clear signals that indicate the manager needs more support or may be a mismatch for the role.
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