Preparing for behavioral interviews
The internet is full of resources for coding and system design interviews. But there’s a third kind of interview for software engineers that gets often ignored during prep - the behavioral interview.
What is a behavioral interview?
The behavioral interview is designed to understand the candidate’s leadership and interpersonal skills, which like technical skills, are a crucial component of the candidate’s ability to do their job effectively.
The questions asked in this interview are designed to find out, for example, whether the candidate:
takes ownership of tasks that are not obviously assigned to them
has a growth mindset
handles conflicts well
Most companies ask questions based on the candidate’s past experience and expect answers based on what actually happened (“Tell me about a time when..”). Some companies might ask questions based on hypothetical scenarios (“What would you do if…”).
Why should I care about it?
As a candidate, you should take behavioral interviews as seriously as you do technical interviews. Not convinced? Here’s why.
Behavioral interviews help determine leveling
Behavioral interview questions are open ended and designed to help companies understand the level at which the candidate is performing - junior, mid-level, senior etc.
Coding skills are expected to be pretty much the same across all levels. The candidate’s system design and behavioral skills determine which level they should be hired at.
Behavioral interview results can trump tech interview results
Not many people know about this, but strong behavioral interview results can overrule some concerns that the hiring committee may have with the candidate’s tech skills.
For example, let’s say the candidate solved the algorithm but the code wasn’t very readable. If the candidate demonstrates in their behavioral interviews that they’re good at acting on constructive feedback, the hiring committee will consider it likely that they will fix their coding style when they receive code review comments once they’re hired. In short, the risk posed by the candidate’s unreadable coding style is considered mitigated by their behavioral skill of being good with feedback.
On the flip side, if the hiring committee finds major red flags in the candidate’s behavioral skills, they are likely to decide not to hire the candidate even if they have strong technical skills. I have seen this happen multiple times in my experience.
Is preparation necessary?
If behavioral interviews are based on your past experiences, can’t you just wing it and answer off the top of your head? Why do you need to prepare?
Preparing for behavioral interviews helps you present your experience in the best possible light, maximizing your chances of being hired at the right level. You can have the best examples in the world, but if you don’t communicate them well, the interviewers will not understand their impact. Or worse, you might not remember the right examples for the given questions.
The good news is that behavioral interview prep isn’t as intense as coding or system design prep. Let’s dive right in to the preparation steps so you can see for yourself that it isn’t too bad!
How to prepare for behavioral interviews
Learn and understand the company’s values
There are some skills that are important to every company, but each company has slightly different core values or leadership principles - and their questions are tailored to their values. Ask your recruiter to send you the company’s core values / principles, or look them up from the company’s website. I’ve listed some examples here:
⭐ Pro tip: if the company you’re interviewing for doesn’t send you this info, just go with Amazon’s leadership principles. They cover the behavioral skills that almost all companies look for.
Make a list of your career highlights and lowlights
From your current and previous jobs, try to answer the following questions:
What projects are you most proud of and why? What behaviors did you demonstrate to make these projects a success?
What are your major failures? What did you learn from them? What would you do differently if you had the chance?
When did you go above and beyond your role expectations?
When did you disagree with your peers and/or management?
When did you receive some critical feedback, and how did you respond to it?
Try and match these examples against the core values you identified from the last step, based on the behaviors you demonstrated. Ideally, you want to use different examples for each question you’re asked - this will really bring out the full range of your experience.
Format examples using the STAR method
The best way to explain an example to your interviewers is to follow the STAR format:
Situation - set the scene. What was the team size? Who were the stakeholders? What was the problem etc.
Task - what was your role? Were you the engineer/team lead etc?
Action - what did you do?
Result - was the problem solved? Make sure you quantify the result if possible (e.g. 43% improvement in latency, 4.8/5 user satisfaction score etc).
Choose examples with the right level of impact
If your goal is to be hired as a senior engineer, please ensure most (if not all) of your examples are from when you were leading projects. Here is your chance to demonstrate your abilities as best as you can.
If most of your examples are about individual tasks that took a few days/weeks to complete, the interviewers will not be convinced of your ability to function as a senior engineer.
What to do if you don’t have suitable examples
This is a tough one. It is acceptable to not have examples for one or two questions - but it will be viewed as a concern if you don’t have examples for more questions. The interviewers will conclude that you aren’t functioning at the right level for the role (or that you aren’t a fit for the company’s culture).
If you’re looking to switch jobs and find that you’re majorly lacking in suitable examples for behavioral interview questions, my advice would be to look at stretching at your current job to practice these skills to build a portfolio of examples that you can use.
If you can think of more prep ideas, or have questions about behavioral interviews, please drop a comment and I’ll try my best to respond.
❤️ My favorite things this week
I’ve been wanting to improve the quality of my LinkedIn posts by adding visuals to them to aid with clarity, and I’m taking this digital image making course. It’s been pretty cool so far.
Impostor syndrome has always been a topic close to my heart.
wrote a very well-researched, actionable guide on how to deal with it.
PREPARACION GRACIAS
GRACIAS