{"id":31061,"date":"2019-01-21T10:00:57","date_gmt":"2019-01-21T15:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/simpleprogrammer.com\/?p=31061"},"modified":"2022-08-28T17:21:41","modified_gmt":"2022-08-28T21:21:41","slug":"ace-behavioral-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/simpleprogrammer.com\/ace-behavioral-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Ace Your Behavioral Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"When we think of coding interviews, most of us tend to think of technical interviews\u2014staring at a whiteboard and hoping that a solution will magically come to us (although there is<\/em> a better way<\/a>).<\/p>\n

At least that\u2019s what I think of.<\/p>\n

Coding interviews are important, don\u2019t get me wrong, but focusing on whiteboarding and ignoring everything else can be just as detrimental. Behavioral interviews are also super important<\/strong> for getting that job.<\/p>\n

\u201cBehavioral interviewing\u201d is basically a catch-all for everything that you are going to do in your interview that is not coding.<\/p>\n

This might be talking about your side projects. It may mean discussing why you\u2019re interested in the company. Whatever it is, the best way to succeed at these interviews is to practice and then go in prepared<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Over the last three years, I\u2019ve helped hundreds of my students at Byte by Byte<\/a> succeed at getting jobs with all the major tech companies, from Google to Amazon to Snap and more. In this post, I\u2019m going to break down the exact strategy you should use to prepare for your behavioral interviews\u2014so that you\u2019ll sound smart and get an offer even if you don\u2019t have much prior experience.<\/p>\n

Behavioral Interviewing Mistakes<\/h2>\n

We\u2019re going to start here because, in some ways, avoiding these mistakes is even more important than doing everything else right. Then when you apply the principles in the rest of this guide, you\u2019ll be in a really good place to succeed at your behavioral interviews.<\/p>\n

These are the most common mistakes I\u2019ve seen that you need to avoid:<\/p>\n

Rambling<\/h3>\n

It is critical to keep your answers concise. You should never give more than a two-minute answer to any question. If your interviewer wants to dig deeper on anything that you mentioned, they will ask, otherwise you are wasting valuable time.<\/p>\n

Take one or two sentences to set up your story, and then talk about what you did. If you have spent time preparing, you should already know how to set up, in a concise and interesting way, any of the stories that you will be telling.<\/p>\n

Not Selling Yourself<\/h3>\n

The whole point of a behavioral interview is to sell yourself and show the interviewer why you\u2019re the right person for the job. That means that you\u2019re allowed to brag about your accomplishments here. <\/strong>Don\u2019t be obnoxious about it, but don\u2019t hesitate to confidently talk about what YOU accomplished.<\/p>\n

One place where you may be underselling yourself inadvertently is when speaking about work that you did as part of a team. Yes, the fact that you worked with a team is important, but it\u2019s also critical to specifically highlight your own accomplishments. Say \u201cI\u201d not \u201cwe\u201d when talking about what you did.<\/p>\n

Not Being Genuine<\/h3>\n

If you\u2019ve ever heard someone say that their weakness is that they \u201cwork too hard\u201d or anything like that, that\u2019s a perfect example of something that will not seem genuine to your interviewer. You want to sell yourself, but picking something that would be considered a positive trait by many looks like you\u2019re trying to cover up your real weaknesses.<\/p>\n

Focus on telling real stories, and tie those stories back to what the company is looking for in an employee. If you do that, you don\u2019t have to be perfect. No one expects you to be perfect. They want to see that you\u2019re a human they want to work with.<\/p>\n

Not Answering the Question<\/h3>\n

This one also comes down to preparation. If you don\u2019t adequately prepare for your interview and have some stories in mind, it can be very difficult to come up with real answers to the questions. Remember that you don\u2019t want to sound like a politician who is avoiding the question.<\/p>\n

Especially if there are areas that you know you don\u2019t have as strong answers for (maybe you don\u2019t have a lot of job experience or leadership experience, for instance), take some extra time to prepare what you will talk about if you get asked questions in those areas.<\/p>\n

If you keep these mistakes in mind as you prepare for your behavioral interviews, you\u2019ll avoid most of the most costly missteps that people make when answering behavioral questions.<\/p>\n

Behavioral Interview Prep<\/h2>\n

[responsive_video type=’youtube’ hide_related=’0′ hide_logo=’0′ hide_controls=’0′ hide_title=’0′ hide_fullscreen=’0′ autoplay=’0′]https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Ebr1jM94fzQ&t=2s[\/responsive_video]The real key to doing well in behavioral interviews is preparation.<\/p>\n

You may think that you can just wing it with these questions, since they\u2019re all about your own experience, but it\u2019s critical that you go back and really analyze your experience. By following these steps, you\u2019ll set yourself up to answer behavioral questions in an impactful way that your interviewer will really respond to.<\/p>\n

Step 0 – Research the Company<\/h3>\n

I\u2019m putting this as step 0, not only because we\u2019re software engineers, but also because it comes before the real prep begins. Before you plan out specifically what you are going to say in your interview, it can be really helpful to look at the job description for the job you\u2019re applying for, and see what soft skills they are looking for.<\/p>\n

Most companies will say that they\u2019re looking for someone with strong initiative, leadership skills, or other vaguely-stated soft skills. Behavioral interviews give you an amazing opportunity to show, and not tell, your interviewer about how you\u2019re a good fit for the company.<\/p>\n

As you go through the remaining steps, think about how you can pick stories that demonstrate those soft skills. How can you work them into your answers? For example, you can talk about how you had to coordinate lots of different team members or how you got everything done while you had a million other things to do to demonstrate your organization or leadership abilities. If you get creative, there are so many ways you can work this into your responses.<\/p>\n

This is an advanced strategy, but it\u2019s gold if you do it right.<\/p>\n

Step 1 – Fill Out the Interview Preparation Grid<\/h3>\n

Gayle Laakmann McDowell has talked a lot about this grid both in Cracking the Coding Interview<\/a> <\/em>and several of her other books. In its simplest form, it is simply a matrix: On one axis is each of your largest projects. And on the other axis are common behavioral questions.<\/p>\n

\"behavioral<\/p>\n

You can find an Excel version of the grid here.<\/a><\/p>\n

STOP!<\/strong> Before you do anything else, it is critical to fill out this grid. Don\u2019t read further in this post until you\u2019ve downloaded and filled out the grid. It will give you much needed context for what we are going to discuss for the rest of the post.<\/em><\/p>\n

Step 2 – Prepare Descriptions of Each Project<\/h3>\n

For every project that you\u2019re going to be discussing, you will want to have a quick one or two sentence description of the project or situation that you are talking about. It\u2019s really easy to ramble and give long, confusing answers here, so this is a good thing to plan ahead of time.<\/p>\n

Write out a description for each project. Keep it short and sweet, and focus on the key points that are relevant to what you will be talking about. Once you\u2019ve written these, practice saying them out loud so you know how they sound and can present them clearly.<\/p>\n

Step 3 – Practice Answering Problems Using Your Grid<\/h3>\n

Before we try to memorize everything on our grid, we\u2019re just going to practice answering some standard questions (like the ones below) with our grid in front of us. Practice formulating a one- or two-minute response to each of the questions for different combinations of projects and questions.<\/p>\n

For example: \u201cWhat was a time you had to make an unpopular decision?\u201d<\/p>\n

Go through each of the projects that you have listed, and try to formulate your answer according to the STAR Technique<\/a> in the next section. Practice speaking out loud and thinking as you go. You want this to become easy.<\/p>\n

Step 4 – Now, Practice Without Your Grid<\/h3>\n

If you spend adequate time on Step 3, you shouldn\u2019t really have to spend too much time actively trying to memorize the grid itself. By practicing and applying the information (and also because it is your life), you should become very comfortable with what you have to say about each project.<\/p>\n

However, still make sure that you do some additional practice without relying on your grid, as you don\u2019t want it to become a crutch. Keep practicing more problems (they\u2019re pretty similar, so you should get pretty used to what to expect and what to say).<\/p>\n

FAQ: What if I Don\u2019t Have Relevant Experience?<\/h3>\n

Sometimes it seems like you don\u2019t have any relevant experience for a specific question.<\/p>\n

Ninety-nine percent of the time this is because you\u2019re thinking too narrowly. Consider the question \u201cTell me about a time when someone on your team wasn\u2019t pulling their weight.\u201d If you\u2019ve never worked a job, you won\u2019t have experience working on a corporate team. But that doesn\u2019t mean you don\u2019t have experience working on a team somewhere else.<\/p>\n

Think about other stories that could be relevant. What about a sports team you were on, where someone never showed up to practice? A school project that you got stuck doing all the work on? Maybe you were the problem on a team, and you could talk about that and what you learned from the experience.<\/p>\n

Not everything that you talk about has to be directly about past work experience. Talking about other aspects of your life (as long as you show how they\u2019re relevant) can make you appear as a much more rounded candidate. Don\u2019t get too siloed into that way of thinking, especially if you don\u2019t have a lot of prior work experience.<\/p>\n

Structuring Your Answers<\/h2>\n

Now that we know what to talk about, it\u2019s important that we also discuss how to talk about it. The way that you structure your answers can make a big difference in how clear and engaging you are. As best as you can, you want to tell a story that is interesting to your interviewer.<\/p>\n

The easiest way to think about structuring your answers is to use the STAR Technique.<\/p>\n

STAR stands for S<\/strong>ituation, T<\/strong>ask, A<\/strong>ction, and R<\/strong>esult. Include each of these pieces, in that order, in your response.<\/p>\n

\"behavioral<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a complete example of the STAR Technique first, and then we\u2019ll break it down:<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to tell you about something that happened at my summer internship. I was interning at Facebook after my junior year of college. My mentor asked me to stay late at work one night toward the end of my internship to help him with a project. We were working on building out a new message handler for X service. I didn\u2019t know too much about Y and Z technology, but he helped me figure it out, and by 1 am we had built a working prototype. Over the next two weeks, we refined it and pushed it into production. As a result of our all-nighter, we got our code up two weeks ahead of schedule, and I made my mentor look really good. I also learned a lot of new technology, and we managed to speed up job handling by 20 percent. That\u2019s an example of a time when I exceeded expectations.<\/em><\/p>\n

The STAR technique is great for any interview questions asking about your experience and how you dealt with different problems. Questions like \u201cWhat is your greatest weakness?\u201d or \u201cHow did you deal with a difficult team member?\u201d will be right at home here.<\/p>\n

Situation (1-2 Sentences<\/em>)<\/h3>\n

We already talked about the situation a bit. This is where you are going to set up the story. Give one or two sentences of background so your interviewer knows the context of what you\u2019re going to be talking about. At bare minimum, you should mention where you were and at what point in your career this took place.<\/p>\n

Optionally, you can also add a sentence at the beginning that summarizes more specifically what you are going to talk about. This can help make sure your interview knows what to focus on, especially for more involved stories.<\/p>\n

Example: \u201cI\u2019m going to tell you about something that happened at my summer internship. I was interning at Facebook after my junior year of college.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Task (1 Sentence<\/em>)<\/h3>\n

This comes along, part and parcel, with the Situation. You want to share what you were actually trying to achieve that led you to take the action in the next step. Basically, you\u2019re setting up the answer to their question and giving them all the relevant details so that you can demonstrate what you are talking about.<\/p>\n

Example: \u201cMy mentor asked me to stay late at work one night toward the end of my internship to help him with a project.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Action (3-5 Sentences<\/em>)<\/h3>\n

Now we\u2019re getting into the meat of things, where you\u2019re actually going to describe what you did. Since we\u2019re getting to the more relevant stuff, you can take more time to describe what you did.<\/p>\n

Caution:<\/strong> Don\u2019t go into too much<\/em> technical detail here. Unless your interviewer is familiar with the technology, they\u2019re likely not going to understand all of what you\u2019re talking about if you go too deep. Plus, going too deep can take a lot of time.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re unsure how much detail to give, err on the side of less. You can always use the following phrase: \u201cI\u2019m happy to describe in more detail if you\u2019re interested.\u201d<\/p>\n

Example: \u201cWe were working on building out a new message handler for X service. I didn\u2019t know too much about Y and Z technology, but he helped me figure it out, and by 1 am we had built a working prototype. Over the next two weeks we refined it and pushed it into production.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Result (3-5 Sentences<\/em>)<\/h3>\n

\"\"This is the part where you really have to bring it home and make sure that you\u2019re connecting back to the core question. Describe the outcome, and give any specific metrics that you can.<\/p>\n

Also do your best to tie your response back to the original question. Try and bring everything full circle, and make sure you keep this concise, like everything else.<\/p>\n

Example: \u201cAs a result of our all-nighter, we got our code up two weeks ahead of schedule, and I made my mentor look really good. I also learned a lot of new technology, and we managed to speed up job handling by 20 percent. That\u2019s an example of a time when I exceeded expectations.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Common Behavioral Interviews Questions<\/h2>\n

Up until now, we\u2019ve been talking about how to answer behavioral questions. These can be tough, and require a good amount of preparation, because we don\u2019t know exactly what we\u2019re going to be asked. However, there are two specific questions that you should expect to be asked in every interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cTell me about yourself.\u201d<\/h3>\n

This is the way pretty much every interview has started since the beginning of time.<\/p>\n

True, this won\u2019t always come up in technical interviews, since interviewers may just want to get to the meat, but you should definitely be prepared to answer this.<\/p>\n

The core tenets apply to this question just as much as any of the other ones.<\/p>\n