I created these artifacts from scratch for a startup I advise. Versions of these documents have been useful throughout my career.

In this role, nothing prior existed, so we created this framework based on my recommendation and hiring experience. The questions were identified by me (as the one hiring for the role), but I tagged each team member for review & feedback. The questions were also designed to against specific goals & requirements/responsibilities outlined in the job description.

The feedback rubric I created based on past experiences and had the CEO + head of staff (who's more formally moving into a people role) review.

A feedback rubric should define the set of dimensions interviewers should consider, help calibrate interviewer grading on these dimensions, enable consistent, well-defined evaluation standards to help reduce unconscious bias, and help interviewers provide relevant feedback that is directly applicable to the hiring criteria and the other signals to make hiring and leveling decisions.

5 stars should also be reserved for exceptional candidates - we also try to avoid 3 stars if possible to help facilitate decision-making and avoid ambiguity.

If you are reading this and want to learn how to create an effective feedback template, you need to start by understanding the skills you need and therefore want to interview for, then tailor your process around that. Ensure that your questions reflect these skills and ensure that they align with your expectations of the role (e.g.: IC vs. manager, channel expert vs. generalist).

Establish this process upfront so that both so that get each candidate has the same experience/process; you can communicate to candidates what to expect at each stage (you want to be respectful of peoples' times). Next, you'll want to involve the right people in the process who will have meaningful input & help assess against those expectations - don't just add people for the sake of doing so.

Try to strive for a consistent interview process (ie, consistent questions/themes) so that you can evaluate candidates effectively and remove bias, while also not being overly scripted & getting a chance to get to know the candidates. Make sure everyone sees the JD and reviews candidate info ahead of time (CV/LinkedIn, portfolio, etc.).

I've found it to be helpful to have candidates going through each phase of the process around the same time for efficiency, if possible. It's also important to identify a clear decision maker (usually the hiring manager) to decide who goes to each subsequent round.

Alanna Gregory

Based on my experiences and collaboration with the CEO and people ops, we created this interview template and feedback rubric to standardize the interview process and reduce biases.

Hiring Rubric and Interview Template - Growth Lead

Building and Running a Team (Hiring Manager)

The goal of this interview is to understand the candidate's prior leadership experience and gain insight into how they think about building and running a successful team (

 people management, which is covered in a separate interview

Here is a list of proposed topics and questions to cover (please do your best to adhere to and touch on all of these):

Describe the structure of your current team and how long you’ve been leading the team.

How do you think about sourcing world-class talent and building a high-functioning growth team?

How would you maintain and foster a positive and collaborative team culture?

How would you approach setting your team’s roadmap and priorities in partnership with other teams?

How would you ensure that your team is focused on the right things and reaching appropriate milestones along the way?

How would you allow for flexibility in the case that priorities change?

Describe a time when you were able to change the priorities of other teams through influence, leading to a large positive impact.

How do you think about tech debt? How do you strike the right balance between shipping quickly and building re-usable tools, pipelines, libraries, frameworks, etc.

Q&A: Collaboration & Partnership (Cross-Functional Partner)

Introduction: This is an interview that will focus on your cross-functional partnering and communication. We’re going to chat about a project you worked on and focus specifically on the role you played and how you partnered and collaborated with cross-functional teams.

Tell me about a project you worked on that you were really excited about or proud of

Describe the role you played and the broader team that you worked with

What were the major challenges? What were the major wins?

What changes led to the big wins you described?

Describe a conflict you ran into. How did you resolve it? 

Tell me about how you had to push back or negotiate features or scope on this project (either directly or through your manager)

How did you manage prioritization on this project? How did you balance this against other projects you may have been working on/requests you received?

What data did you use and how to help inform how you approached resolving these conflicts?

The goal of this interview is to understand how the candidate thinks about developing, mentoring & growing a team. How they mentor and coach, how they manage individuals based on performance and how they give, receive, and use feedback.

Describe a time where you delivered constructive feedback to a person on your team. How was it received?

How do you assist with the professional development of the team members you manage?

Describe your leadership style. How does this influence your approach to training & mentoring?

What kind of people do well under your leadership, and what kinds do not do as well?

Can you share a piece of constructive feedback someone on your team has given you about your management & leadership? What was the context & how was it received?

Describe how you motivate your team. What do you find most/least effective?

What attributes do you value in your team?

Final Round/Sell Interview (Skip Level Manager/CEO/Leader)

Q&A: People Management (Skip Level Manager/CEO/Leader)

The goal of this interview is to understand how the candidate thinks about team/individual performance. How they mentor and coach, how they manage individuals based on performance and how they give, receive, and use feedback.

How would you determine the performance of your team?

What would be some simple but effective ways to measure or quantify team performance?

How would you determine or measure the performance of individuals on the team?

How would you manage an ICs progress and give them guidance?

When would it make sense to provide strict direction vs. allowing them more creativity in determining an approach?

What would signal to you that you should get more or less involved in a particular project?

What is your approach to managing low performers?

How would you balance coaching them vs. changing their focus to other projects?

When would you decide to create a performance plan for a low performer?

Have you had to do this in the past? If so, please describe.

What is your approach to managing high performers?

How do you keep high performers motivated and engaged?

How do you seek feedback from others? Leads, team-mates, stakeholders, etc.

How do these people differentiate feedback from criticism? How do you?

Describe a time when you gave difficult but constructive feedback to someone not on your immediate team that led to a positive outcome.

Feedback Rubric - submitted by each person individually

• Able to articulate clear business impetus behind the project 

• Demonstrates an understanding of the context from multiple perspectives and is able to communicate it 

• Deep focus on business/customer impact and not just technical challenges 

• Proactively brainstorms and finds opportunities to collaborate with Product/Business and leverage respective strengths 

• If required, is able to prioritize and push/back and uses data to inform how they prioritize 

• Works deeply as an active collaborator to get the team to the best solution 

• Requires minimal prompting/guidance to get to these points

• Articulates an impetus from the business side but isn’t necessarily the one fully driving the project initiation 

• Can understand that there are multiple perspectives involved, but fails to fully grasp the import/impact of those perspectives 

• Talks about business impact, but understanding of focus is more shallow 

• Shows strong collaboration skills, but isn’t necessarily always proactively driving these. Tries to own too much/too little 

• Pushes back, but may be more reluctant to do so at points and not completely sure of the why 

• Can require some prompting, but overall trending in right direction 

• Articulates an impetus from the business side but isn’t the one driving the project initiation 

• Registers business impact, but is equally focused on technical side 

• Collaboration approach is more mixed, shows less pro-activity, but still is able to drive value through focusing on respective strengths/expertise • Reluctant to push back but still shows some examples, doesn’t always prioritize the right things or justify why 

• Communication is more mixed at points, still clear, but muddled or off-track occasionally 

• Requires some guidance, but overall trending in the right direction | 

• Very limited understanding of impetus from the business, does not initiate 

Hiring Rubric and Interview Template - Growth Lead

Hiring Rubric and Interview Template - Growth Lead

Round 1: Screening Call (Hiring Manager)

Round 2:

Growth Case Study (Hiring Manager)

Building and Running a Team (Hiring Manager)

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