Most interviews include questions about your technical skills/background, core-competencies or behaviours and motivational questions. Technical interviews are more in-depth and focus on your expertise, skills, qualifications and knowledge. Technical skills are usually acquired over a long period of time. This article explains what you can expect during a technical interview, so you can prepare effectively and improve your interview skills and confidence.

What is a technical interview

Technical interviews are an essential part of the interview process for IT, engineering and other technical roles. The questions measure your proficiency in the technical competencies of the role, focussing on your technical skills, knowledge and expertise. Your answers evidence your problem-solving skills and other technical skills related to the role.

Technical interviews often ask you to apply technical knowledge to practical scenarios, you may be asked to complete a task related to the role, for instance analysing data, or identifying a coding error.

For senior leaders, a technical interview is an opportunity to show that you understand technology deeply enough to guide strategy, make trade-offs, communicate technical decisions effectively, and earn the trust of both engineers and executives. It’s about leading teams to deliver outstanding results, rather than your personal ability to write flawless code on the spot. Leadership technical interviews usually focus on:

• Strategic decision-making – how you evaluate trade-offs between cost, scalability, performance, and timelines.
• Technical leadership – how you guide engineering teams, set standards, and align with business goals.
• Strategic problem-solving – how you define challenges and create actionable, realistic solutions.

What interviewers are looking for in your answers

During a technical interview, recruiters assess your technical skills, focussing on the essential and desirable skills in the role profile. Recruiters are looking for specific evidence to assess your suitability for the role, this includes specific STAR based examples, assessment/test results and your interview answers. It is crucial to choose examples which clearly demonstrate the impact you have made, such as working on high-profile projects, or completing more senior tasks than would be expected at your level.

Leadership technical interviews usually assess your leadership style, how you build cohesive collaborative teams, so you take people on a journey with you, rather than dictating an approach, how clearly you communicate with engineers and executives, and your decision-making skills, how you balance technical quality with business realities.

Preparing for a technical interview

The best way to prepare for a technical interview is to focus on how you can deliver value in each technical area of the job description. Review the essential and desirable skills from the job description/person specification, link your experience to each area, and identify your best examples (think about your biggest achievements, the biggest difference you have made…)

Technical interview questions may ask:

• For a specific example of how you have demonstrated one of the skills from the job description – use the STAR format
• What you would do or advise in a specific situation. E.g. “What technologies would you recommend to a client who is looking to…”
• A high level overview of your experience in one of the main areas of the role, “what experience do you have of…”
• About your knowledge
  

As part of their interview preparation, some people find it helpful to plan which examples to use for each technical skill from the job description, other people prefer to prepare full STAR based examples, other people may not feel the need to prepare any answers. There is no right or wrong answer, it depends on your ability to recall information, your personality and how confident you feel.

I suggest researching the company, and refreshing your knowledge of the main technologies which the company uses, as well as current trends, tools and approaches, especially if you are in a leadership role where your last hands-on role was several years ago.

You may wish to prepare some questions to ask the interviewer, so you appear interested in the company and the role, however don’t ask anything which you could have found on the company website or in the job description.

Improving your Interview Skills

Would you like professional assistance in preparing for interviews effectively and improving your interview skills and confidence? I offer interview skills help via interview coaching sessions, personally tailored to your needs. You may wish to visit the interview coaching section of my website, where you can find more information and prices. Or you are welcome to contact me, and I’ll be pleased to discuss how I can plan a session to help you.