Sample Answer
I lean toward a mix, with emphasis on hands-on technical ability backed by architecture and collaboration examples. As a mid-level engineer I spent 60% of my time writing and reviewing code, but the other 40% was designing components and helping teammates. For instance, I designed a component library used by five product teams that reduced duplicate UI work by 45% and sped up onboarding of new engineers by two weeks on average. In interviews, I appreciate a coding task followed by questions about the design decisions and how you communicated them to product and QA — that reveals both technical depth and how you operate in a team.
Keywords
On your resume you mention working on a cross-functional project (e.g., involving multiple teams or stakeholders). Describe a situation from that project where priorities conflicted—how did you navigate the trade-offs and what was the final outcome?
Walk me through a recent multi-channel digital marketing campaign you managed end-to-end. How did you set objectives, choose channels, allocate budget, and measure success?
In your resume you note improving or optimizing [a process, KPI, or metric]. What specific baseline metrics did you start from, what steps did you personally take, and how did you verify that the improvement was due to your changes rather than external factors?
In your civil engineering studies, what specific design coursework or project work did you complete related to irrigation channels or canals (e.g., design of lined/unlined canals, distributaries, minors)? Describe one such design in detail, including how you determined discharge, permissible velocity, section dimensions, and lining choice for Gujarat-type soil and climate conditions.
Based on your hydrology and irrigation engineering background, explain how you would estimate the irrigation water requirement for a kharif crop in a semi-arid region of Gujarat. Walk me through each step: from reference evapotranspiration estimation, crop coefficient selection, effective rainfall calculation, to arriving at canal discharge for a given command area.