Behavioral question

Suppose you have 3 engineers. How would you allocate the 3 engineers between addressing hacked accounts and spam messages?

Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.

What this question tests

Prioritization and resource allocation under scarcity: can you reason about impact and urgency to split a small team across two real risks.

Assess the severity of each problem: hacked accounts cause direct user harm and trust loss, spam degrades experience but is lower stakes per incident.
Assess scale and trend, assume hacked accounts are lower volume but rising sharply while spam is high volume but stable.
Weigh urgency, since account takeovers can cascade, for example a hacked account sending spam to its contacts, linking the two problems.
Propose a split, for example two engineers on hacked accounts given severity and cascading risk, one on spam given it is more contained.
State you would revisit the split weekly based on incident trend data rather than fixing it permanently.
Define success as reduction in confirmed account takeovers and spam reports per week.

Connects the two problems, noting hacked accounts often cause spam, which should influence the split.
Gives a specific allocation with reasoning, not just says split evenly.
Treats the allocation as adjustable based on incoming data, not a permanent decision.

Splitting engineers evenly without justifying why, treating both problems as equally weighted.
Ignoring that the two problems can be causally linked.

Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.