"Tell me about a specific time you intentionally developed talent on your engineering team. How did you identify what an engineer needed, create a growth plan, and balance that investment with delivery commitments—ideally in a Best Buy context such as a team supporting BestBuy.com, the Best Buy app, or Geek Squad digital experiences? Walk me through what you personally did and what changed as a result."
This question tests whether you treat talent development as an active management responsibility rather than something that happens passively through project work. Interviewers want to see how you diagnose strengths and gaps, tailor coaching to different engineers, create opportunities without lowering the bar, and stay accountable for both team growth and business outcomes.
It also reveals how you prioritize when delivery pressure is real. Strong engineering managers can grow people while still shipping, not only when capacity is abundant.
A strong answer uses one concrete example, not general philosophy. The best responses show a clear development need, specific actions you took over time, measurable improvement for the engineer and the team, and a lesson you carried forward into your management approach.