The Staff Loop

Whether your scope is staff, not senior. The senior rounds stay, and you must finish them quickly. Then come rounds that test scope. The first is a strategy round of up to 60 minutes, such as "design the data platform for a 500-person company". The second is a deep dive: you draw a system you led, and they drill into it. The third is a leadership round, which can veto the offer. One excellent pipeline is senior. A direction many teams follow, with owners, a first step and a measure, is staff.

• Run the strategy round in five moves, out loud. Frame the problem and the users. List what every team needs. Choose a small first step you can undo. Say who owns what, and how teams move onto it. Say how you measure it, and what would change your mind.
• Write a one-page proposal for a change you would lead. Give the problem with a number, the idea in one sentence, the steps, the cost and the biggest risk. End with the three numbers you would be judged on. Practise defending it in 20 minutes.
• Prepare the deep dive at staff scope. Draw a system you led that other teams depend on. Know every box, every number, and every decision you would change. Say which decisions were yours, and which teams changed what they did.
• For each story, answer four questions. How big was the problem? What decision was yours? Who changed what they did because of it? What lasted after you left? Have a two-minute and a seven-minute version.
• Prepare one story where your influence failed. Say what signal you missed, and what you do differently now. Leadership rounds often ask for one.
• In every design answer, name the trade-off, the cost and the risk without being asked, and hold an opinion. Say what would change your mind.
• Keep the SQL and Python fast: they are a gate, and time saved there goes to the design rounds.

• A senior design in a staff round: one pipeline, done well, with no owners, adoption plan or direction.
• Stories about your own output, not about teams that changed because of you.
• "It depends" with no decision. Pick one, and say the trigger to change it.
• Calling a team decision "mine", or your own decision "the team’s". Say plainly which was which.
• Shallow answers when they drill into your own system. Down-levelling is often a depth problem.