Individual Mentoring and Coaching Questions

Covers mentoring, coaching, and developing individual contributors across career stages from entry level to senior. Interviewers evaluate one on one coaching skills and structured mentoring approaches, including diagnosing mentee needs, setting growth goals, designing tailored learning and career plans, giving constructive feedback, running effective reviews or critiques, delegating progressively challenging work, scaffolding learning, and creating psychological safety. This topic also encompasses supporting promotions and transitions, balancing technical skill coaching with leadership and career coaching, measuring mentee progress and development outcomes such as promotions, increased ownership, retention or improved performance metrics, and contributing to succession planning. Candidates should be prepared to give concrete examples of mentees, the actions taken to teach or correct behavior, how they documented or institutionalized learnings, and how they adapted style for different learners while preserving individual development.

EasyBehavioral

0 practiced

You're a Solutions Architect meeting a newly onboarded junior architect for their first one-on-one (30-60 minutes). Describe how you'd structure the meeting to diagnose technical strengths/weaknesses, career aspirations, client-facing confidence, and cultural fit. What specific questions would you ask, which artifacts would you review (e.g., ADRs, past designs), and how would you document and agree on immediate and 6-month goals and next steps?

HardTechnical

0 practiced

A mentee writes technically sound designs but fails to align them with clear business outcomes, leading to friction with sales. How would you coach them to think in outcomes, link architecture to customer ROI, and present that mapping to stakeholders? Provide concrete exercises, templates for outcome mapping, and evaluation techniques.

EasyBehavioral

0 practiced

Describe how you would give constructive feedback during a design critique with a junior mentee. Explain a structured feedback approach (language, examples, follow-up) that preserves dignity, teaches design thinking, and results in actionable next steps.

MediumTechnical

0 practiced

A high-performing mentee is being considered for promotion to manager. How would you prepare them for either a managerial track or staying as an IC? List decision questions you would ask the mentee, stretch tasks you would assign to reveal aptitude, and support mechanisms you would provide for both paths.

HardTechnical

0 practiced

Describe a process to detect and remediate mentoring malpractice such as bias, favoritism, gatekeeping, or withholding opportunities within an architecture team. Include detection signals, governance and escalation paths, remediation steps, and how you would restore trust with affected mentees.

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