Candidate 2

Technical evaluation for CTO position

1 Objective

The goal of the evaluation process was to determine, from a technical perspective, if the candidate is likely to be a suitable CTO at Client Business. This evaluation includes non-technical attributes of the candidates (like disposition, availability and mindset) only when they’re relevant to technical functions.

1.1 Evaluation criteria

In order to make a determination, we defined five essential characteristics of the position:

1. Technical proficiency: An understanding of software engineering, software application architecture, best practice and the general technology landscape.
2. Team leadership: The facility to grow and nurture effective groups of people in order to create useful products.
3. Active participation: The ability and desire to take a leading role in the creation of a product, initially taking a hands-on approach to design and engineering.
4. Entrepreneurship: The ability to design, launch and run a new technical product. Critically, this includes the identification of business requirements, an understanding of operational costs, and effective use of resources.
5. Growth stewardship: The capacity to competently and efficiently scale and adapt a technical product as business requirements and user needs change.

1.2 Criteria assessment

Each criterion is assigned a numeric rating from 1 to 5, according to the following schema:

2 Evaluation methodology

2.1 Process

After finding the candidate and performing a basic qualification based on their CV and published media, the process had three phases:

1. Initial technical interview: A conversation of approximately 1 hour, during which the candidate is questioned on their technical suitability in relation to the criteria above, and given the opportunity to highlight their skills, accomplishments and relevant experience.
2. Technical challenge: The candidate was issued a difficult technical challenge to complete in their own time. The challenge is deliberately awkward in four specific domains, all of which are designed to simulate the pressures of being a CTO.
3. Technical challenge review: After the candidate completed their technical challenge, we had a second conversation to review the solution they had come up with.

2.2 Criteria coverage

3 Evaluation results

3.1 Technical proficiency: 2.5/5

• Initial interview: Candidate 2 is verbally proficient with relevant technology. He seemed to have a good sense of how large software systems should work and an idea of how business requirements interact with design and engineering.
• Technical challenge: Candidate 2 provided a complete, costed architectural diagram for his solution. He has a good sense of when to build components and when to rent them.

3.2 Team leadership: 4/5

Candidate 2 has led a boom-and-bust cycle, peaking at several dozen employees and reducing to a handful over time. He has demonstrated proficiency with soft management skills and sensitivity to potential team rifts.

3.3 Active participation: 3/5

Candidate 2 admits that his programming skills are rusty. His challenge solution demonstrates an attempt to lay down good scaffolding for future development.

3.4 Entrepreneurship: 3.5/5

He seems to have had a significant role in at least the technical design of successful systems. Although his challenge solution was not cost-efficient, he did give a case study of significant cost savings in a previous project.

3.5 Growth stewardship: 5/5

Candidate 2 has a proven track record of scaling a software product in both directions. He identified future points of growth, change, and concerns in the system.

4 Summary

Candidate 2 is a strong candidate. He completed the challenge to a minimally satisfactory level. He acknowledged his limitations upfront and admitted to requiring help to complete the challenge, demonstrating humility and self-awareness. We recommend Candidate 2 under the provision of him needing to immediately hire key members of the engineering team to get the project rolling.