Acquisition/Acqui-hire interview prep

In many acquisitions, the acquirer requests a round of interviews with each member of the team. These interviews are mostly equivalent to what a typical candidate would experience in an interview with the acquirer, with a few differences. The results of these interviews determines if the acquisition goes through, how many people get offers, and the final acquisition price.

Preparing for these interviews means a stronger performance in these interviews, which translates to more people getting offers and a higher acquisition price.

Who I Work With

I will work with your whole team, including developers, designers, project managers, the CEO, and other leadership. However, because acquisitions are usually driven by a need for technical talent, I tend to spend the most time with the developers. I also often spend a good amount of time with CEO (who tends to interview for a product management role, but it depends on the company), product managers, QA and other technical roles.

Typical Schedule

Typically, I come in and speak with the team for ~2 hours on interview tips and advice. Some portion of this is non-technical and appropriate for the whole team, but most of it is technical. This talk typically involves re-teaching core Computer Science topics to developers who might have forgotten it (or never learned it).

Afterward, I do 1-on-1 mock interviews with each member of the team. Time permitting, I try to do 2 - 3 (and ideally more) mock interviews with each developer. 

After our mock interview session, employees are typically given "homework" problems to work on.

Last minute requests are okay (and, given that these are fast-moving acquisitions, tend to be more common than not).

my experience

My background is in software engineering, not recruiting. I worked as a software engineer for Google, Microsoft, and Apple, and served on Google’s software engineering hiring committee for several years.

After leaving Google, I went on to found CareerCup, a company dedicated to improving interviewing for both candidates and companies. I’m the author of the two best-selling tech interview prep books (Cracking the Coding Interview and Cracking the PM Interview), as well as two career-management books: Cracking the PM Career and Cracking the Tech Career.

I've successfully coached a number of people and teams through these interviews at companies such as Google, Yahoo, Facebook, LinkedIn, and AOL. Past clients included Xobni (acquired by Yahoo), Impermium (acquired by Google), Incredible Labs/Donna (acquired by Yahoo), Blink/Meh Labs (acquired by Yahoo), and others (confidential). 

References happily provided.