Interview with the CTO? 3 strategies to prepare
Congratulations on making it far enough in the hiring process to interview with the CTO - but don't breathe a sigh of relief just yet. An interview with senior management can often result in a fixed hiring decision - regardless of what the rest of the team thinks.
Basics of the interview
Before you familiarize yourself with the nuances of CTO interviews, you should know your basics well so that you can also achieve better results in interviews with other team members.
Before anything else, begin by telling your career story and making sure that the narrative portrays what you want it to in the way that you want it to. Even for the most technical of roles, outstanding communication skills can have a positive impact on your application. The ability to clearly guide an interviewer through your past experiences is an excellent way to demonstrate this. Since CTOs generally focus more on the cohesion and effectiveness of the technical team, demonstrating effective soft skills becomes even more important.
Remember that practice makes perfect - this definitely applies to preparing for technical job interviews as well. While the more technical questions are likely to come up in other interviews, there's no harm in being prepared for anything the CTO could ask. If you're interviewing for a smaller company, the interview process is probably less structured, so there's a higher chance that your job interview will also include more technical questions with the management team.
Know your interviewer
Conducting thorough research on your potential employer—particularly the relevant CTO—before an interview can be extremely helpful. In addition to checking their LinkedIn, GitHub, and other online profiles (focusing on the more technical aspects), see if they have a personal blog and read some of the articles. This will give you an understanding of not only the industries and types of companies for which they have previously worked but also their technical abilities, experiences, and views on managing teams. Furthermore, you will gain insight into how your target employer deals with its engineering team.
While online research can give you a good insight into the career path and experiences of the CTO, it is much easier for insiders to obtain information at the level of personality.
It can't hurt to ask the HR manager or head of HR for their thoughts on the CTO if you don't have a network that knows them. Especially if the team wants to hire you, it is in their interest to help you if you talk to the CTO. The worst they can say is "No" if they are not willing or able to provide insights.
Know the broader context
As mentioned before, it is unlikely that the CTO will ask you about technical matters (unless you are one of the first technical employees). The management team usually thinks less about details and more about overarching business strategies, synergies and risks. So be prepared to explain your thoughts and questions on these topics. When you talk to the CTO, you are probably already a good candidate that the team expects to be able to think at a higher level.
The time to ask questions of the CTO is when you have prepared some in advance that demonstrate you have done your research. This is also an opportune moment to inquire about the organization's long-term objectives and how you could develop within it, as well as queries regarding growth projections and how your role might evolve over time to fit into a changing team.
