Patterns for the Behavioral Interviews.
First the 3 patterns and sample question and sample answers and the questions to ask after the interview.
Recognize the behavioral questions.
Question generally starts with
Tell me about a time when…
Can you share a situation when…
What do you do when…
Give me an example of…
Describe a…
Interviewer can ask some question like biggest, greatest, “proudest”, “worst”, “best”, “biggest”, “most significant”, “fastest” situations.
- One can get confused about the answer as you may think is not the biggest one. In this case listen to the question and come up with the practiced and prepared answers.
In case if it is not the important one then you can say like “this failure was’t the biggest in terms of loss of business, but it had a significant impact on me because it revealed a blind spot.”
Interviewer can go for a small talk and ask for some question to make you comfortable or get you off script.
Be prepared for some questions like -
What do you like to do in your free time?
What book are you reading right now?
Seen any good movies lately?
Are you a sports fan?
Do you have any exciting trips planned?
Three basic variety of the behavioral questions.
Prior experience Questions.
Hypotheticals.
Value Based Questions.
Prior Experience Questions.
Interviewers are listening to understand your instincts and influences. Interviewer wants to understand you and how you behave in past and they can understand on how will you behave in future.
Even if you are an experienced professional, you may choose an example from a volunteer experience or your personal life that demonstrates who you are.
Make sure that everything you say in a response is relevant to the response. Everything that you mention should come back around, if it doesn’t, then it should not be included. For example, think of a recipe in a cookbook. The “ingredient” section only lists things that will be used to make the dish - nothing more, nothing less. Do the same for your answers.
Example of prior experience questions and answers.
Tell me about a time when you experienced failure.
" I learned how important it is to take responsibility for a failure as the leader of a team. By taking responsibility, acknowledging the problems, and committing to solutions, I was able to keep the support of the plant leadership. I also remembered that a few of the team members had asked me before the launch about doing more hardware testing and I had dismissed their concerns. I apologized to them and promised to do better going forward. My personal takeaway was to be a better listener and give full consideration to concerns that are brought to my attention."
Use I and not We. Highlight your contribution.
No need to go dep to the jargons. Give overview and emphasise on the learning part and outcome part.
Sample Questions.
What was the last project you led, and what was its outcome?
Give me an example of a time that you felt you went above and beyond at work.
Describe a time when your work was criticized, how you responded, and what happened as a result.
Have you ever been on a team where someone was not doing their part? How did you handle it?
Tell me about a time when you had to give someone difficult feedback. How did you handle it?
How do you handle working with people who annoy you?
What was the most difficult period in your life, and how did you deal with it?
Give me an example of a time you did something wrong. How did you handle it?
Tell me about a time when you had to deal with conflict on the job.
What assignment was too difficult for you, and how did you resolve the issue?
Give me an example of a difficult decision you had to make. How did you come to that decision?
Give an example of an idea you implemented.
Describe a mentor who has impacted you in a positive way.
Was there a person in your career who really made a difference? In what way?
Tell me about your proudest achievement.
Example of Prior Experience Questions and Answers.
When things go wrong, how do you deal with it? Give me an example of a situation you dealt with in a previous role.
I was working as an App Developer for XYZ Company when a Zero-Day Privilege Elevation vulnerability was discovered. Microsoft issued a patch and we had 6000 Windows servers running in 4 different data centers that all needed to be patched as quickly and efficiently as possible (Situation). It wasn’t my job to patch servers, but the VP asked all of us for ideas to get the work done faster (Tasks). I suggested that several of us could help do validation if the procedure was documented. Others could help with tracking the servers coming in and out of rotation and updating tickets. This freed up the Systems Engineers to do the work that only they could do (Actions). I had never done some of those tasks before, so I had to follow procedures exactly and ask for help if I wasn’t sure about something. I was willing to take directions and learn. I took good notes and helped make the documentation easier to follow (Results). I gained a new appreciation for the Systems and Security Engineers. We worked long hours, but it felt good to pull together. It was also good to know that we could do that again if a serious security issue came up.
Be ready for possible follow up questions:
How did you manage separation of duties? How long did it take overall?
Hypothetical Questions.
It demonstrates creativity and confidence.
Parsing and spotting hypothetical questions.
“Imagine…”
“If…”
“Put yourself in the position of…”
“If you could have…”
“It’s 2050 and…”
“You’re in charge of x,y,z and…”
If you are realistic then you will ask for specifics. Resist the urge. If you need specifics then make your assumptions as your specifics.
Example of Hypothetical Questions.
If I were your supervisor and asked you to do something that you disagreed with, what would you do?
“If my supervisor asked me to do something I disagreed with I would respectfully push back. I would ask questions about the value of the project/feature/task (etc.) and how it would benefit the greater good of users. It’s important to me that I believe in what I’m working on and if I disagree with it, I think that it’s important and appropriate to push back against my management for further explanation.”
In hypothetial question add those skills and terms that is useful to the organization. Do the research.
Within a 5-minute time span, the following people come to you asking for help: A V.P. whom you do not regularly interact with, your manager, and a customer. All three say their need is urgent. How do you prioritize them?
Motivation When I ask this question, I’m less concerned with the candidate’s answer and more focused on their thought process. The HOWs and WHYs are the keys for me. Anecdotally, when I’ve asked this question, the majority of the candidates prioritize in the following order: V.P., manager, then the customer. Candidates rarely dig deeper to find out what the requests are. Instead, they prioritize based on titles alone.
I’m mainly looking for two things in the candidate’s response - Thought process and effective communication. Thought Process. Does the candidate ask for more information to make an informed decision on how to prioritize? What if the issue the V.P. is facing is the inability to connect their bluetooth speaker to their laptop so they can listen to music in their office? Is that truly more important than a customer needing help? After hearing the needs, are they able to correctly prioritize based on the information they’ve received?
Communication. Do they show that they are able to communicate with people at different levels? Moreover, are they able to deliver “bad” news to people at different levels? Will they let everyone know how and when they plan to address their needs?
Sample question.
Your team is giving a presentation in two hours and one member just called in sick. What do you do?
If you had to choose between a work environment that was always in chaos and one in which nothing ever changed, which would you choose?
If you inherited so much money that you never had to work again, how would you spend your time?
If you could create a fictional company to make the world a better place, what would that company do?
Imagine that you are the product manager for a consumer device that just launched, but 20% of the devices are breaking in the first week from normal use. What do you do?
Describe how you would handle a situation if you were required to finish multiple tasks by the end of the day, and there was no conceivable way that you could finish them.
Target.
Complete the response in 2-3 mins.
Able to find the responsibility and action.
Know the why of choosing those actions.
Check if any of the points added values to the organization.
Share some analytical approach and decisions making process.
These questions may not necessarily follow the STAR technique because the situation is given and there are no tangible results that you can declare. Instead, restate the situation, be creative with your tasks and actions, and the results will be implied.
Value Based Question.
Values-based questions openly examine whether your values are a good match with the organization’s values.
Do the research with the organizations value.
Terms like Extreme Owner, Customer First, Empathy, Team Player, Impactful decisions.
If organization value like “Act like a owner” then in the answer say like “I owned”.
If the organization values “Continuous Improvement” then in the answer we can say “this was a one-time fix for the problem, but in order to continuously improve, we monitored the results daily to understand early indicators.”
Give me an example of an org culture where you felt like you could do your best work. What was it about the culture that allowed you to perform well?
When I was at ABC Foundation, there was a real focus on sharing information. We worked in teams of 8-10 people, each with a Lead. Leads reported up to managers that had two or three teams. The culture was very collaborative. Everybody worked on everything, so you got to know each other’s code and areas of expertise. If you discovered a new problem or way to do something, you were expected to add it to the KB. There was less reliance on tribal knowledge than there is at other places I’ve worked. There was no pressure to act like you know everything. If you had a question, you owned the question until it was answered, and then you were responsible for documenting the answer so others would have it. It wasn’t ok to just pose a question and be stuck if nobody responded. I got better at writing code other people could follow. My documentation really improved. We debated things and tested new ideas, but it wasn’t about something being right or winning an argument. It was about finding the best way to do something, which is really satisfying to me. If I were to join your company, I would hope to foster the same behaviors.
Subtopic Culture. Sample Question.
Imagine you work in a place with a negative culture what would you do about it and how would you improve it.
General Pattern - First Part - In interview some question will be behavioral and some are open-ended hypothetical questions.
Answer - First point to focus - CFAS - Method to use when you get any open-ended or hypothetical question. Ask clarifying questions yes or no that’s true clarification then we want to present just a few high-level concepts that are going to help uh narrow our focus for the solution so think with the framework really high level then we’re going to make just a few assumptions to really narrow our focus and create great visuals for our audience and then lastly we are going to solve focusing in on one framework concept at a time that really helps keep us organized.
Remember when it comes to open-ended questions the space you build is actually more important than the words you use so really make sure you’re building in that great space and then secondarily transitions make sure that you create really strong transitions that will also be critical for success.
Clarifycation.
Well a few items i would want to clarify before we dive in. Is this negative culture only on my team or is this across the entire organization. Has it always been this way or was this negative culture triggered by some form an event even something like covid. I would definitely want to understand where this is coming from is it based on kind of leadership is it more about the overall strategy process and vision or is this something related to benefits. Definitely want to understand the size of the company are we talking about a small medium or large company. Is this my personal opinion or do other few people feel this way. Lastly i would want to know if there had been any past or recent attempts to try and fix this situation.
Can you clarify any of these items for me okay.
Assumption.
A few concepts we would want to focus on to solve this challenge are we absolutely have to establish some really strong goals.
We want to look at that historical data because that historical data will lead and guide us we’re going to want to bring in the critical stakeholders focusing strongly on communication always having that inclusivity lens we’re absolutely going to have to do some training and education and then we’re going to want to look at those specific success measurements now of all those items i think we should start with a really basic one in terms of communication but is there an area that you want to focus.
Why don’t we get started by making a couple of assumptions let’s assume that this negative culture is across the board and it’s somewhat facilitated almost supported by not only leadership but just people within the organization and it’s common knowledge and everybody kind of knows it and understands it let’s say that basically i’ve experienced this my entire time there let’s say i’ve been there for a year and let’s call it a medium-sized org of like 500 people and then lastly let’s make the assumption that when i first joined there was some form of an attempt to really make this better but it just didn’t really take it didn’t really work.
so if we’re going to start by focusing in on communication let’s set the right tone and mindset right away all communications should start by thinking with positive intent we didn’t try to intentionally get to a negative culture and then i want to really take that empathetic lens with anybody i communicate and speak with and along and coupled with that empathy is we have to create an environment of psychological safety this is a critical facet of communication that people feel like they have a safe space to speak.
I am going to reach out to my direct teammates and lead and we’re going to start the communication process so this is probably just scheduling one-to-ones we could make this pretty simplistic do it all via video. Im only going to really focus it on two items.
- I want to come in with a listening mindset so come in and just kind of think about and see their observations just listen to hear if they’ve built in any bias themselves
- Then the questions will all be focused around opportunities how can we create better ownership how can we create better alignment and then end each meeting with a mini action plan and a commitment for me to keep them included in any next steps.
We could definitely go more in depth into the types of questions i would ask in these meetings we could go and talk a little bit more about that critical item of an action plan where we can move on to training and education is there any part that you prefer i focus on okay let’s kind of flip over we talked a little bit about the what right which was part of your initial question now let’s focus a little bit on the how and let’s really pivot and focus in on that training and education so we want to really capture and identify any themes from the conversations with both my teammates and anybody in leadership ideally just my direct lead secondarily.
I would want to conduct research on what have been some successful trainings that have happened within not only this organization but other organizations and then make sure that we do some form of live workshop now it may have to be virtual i definitely want to make sure it’s live if we can do it in person that’s going to be great and then bring in the exercises. A good exercise we might want to build off of is like the colors exercise which is uh behavioral assessment personality type of test the sticky note that one could be good too because the sticky notes are really about taking different concepts and themes that i mentioned before and this could allow us to focus in on maybe some like root causes constraints and then also kind of just looking at the current policies and standards that we have in place now again the sticky note exercise gets a little trickier virtual but the major goal of the workshop is that we uncover how to work better together and more importantly we not only learn it for ourselves but we figure out maybe some opportunities for some repeatability and this will require another strong action plan with great documentation tracking we want to be really transparent and then just creating that system for ongoing support whether that’s coaching mentorship whatever is needed to ensure the success of the training sue i’m happy to dive much deeper into this training and education piece or we can kind of come full circle on the how and discuss success measurements do you have any preference or anything else you’d like me to focus on okay in order to really get into the success of changing around a negative culture we need this communication and training and education piece and while this is an urgent item we’ll probably need to spend i would say about two to four weeks let’s kind of focus in on four weeks after that initial workshop to establish and gather any data about learnings any opportunities for improvement and i want to take all this information and then i want to create some form of like short slide deck let’s think maybe three slides something like that and then we could in those slides it would just be about defining the overall strategy approach and the learnings that we had for success i’d first roll this up to my lead and then i’d look for support just with within my own leadership chain and the purpose of this presentation is to demonstrate how we were able to make a small cultural shift and have enough of a timeline and data to show what we did and by piloting this small test group with the purpose of presenting it within my own leadership i just want to continue to try and pivot and change the culture like one small group at a time the presentation is going to be super simplistic it’s going to be that three slides five minutes to just present and then five minutes of q a and then the last piece i just would want to focus in on for measuring success would be focusing in on any kind of celebration recognition of both teams and individuals and build that strong survey cadence the surveys are going to be critical to make sure that we’re keeping everything on track sue i am happy to dive deeper into these success metrics any of the initial concepts i mentioned or any other area that you’d like to focus on for success and that’s it i wish you the best of luck with these types of questions they are tricky but focus on these items and you’ll do great thanks
Additional point from my side I would take some tests like behavoiral tests.
Test
Choose the most thorough answer for the question.
Describe a mentor who has impacted you in a positive way.
Answer 1 - My advisor in college was very supportive of me. She placed me in positions where I would succeed. Even when I didn’t know it, my advisor was always looking for ways that she could help me build my resume. Whenever my advisor sent an opportunity my way, I would take it and try to make the best out of it. Since I knew that her career had been very similar to what I wanted to go into, I fully trusted her and the opportunities that she brought to the table. With the help of my advisor’s recommendations, I was able to secure a good job right out of college. Even though I had only just graduated, I left college with a full resume that made me marketable and brought me to a great, full-time position.
This answer follows the STAR principle.
Answer 2 - Whenever my advisor sent an opportunity my way, I would try it and try to make the best out of it. Since I knew that her career had been very similar to what I wanted to go into, I fully trusted her and the opportunities that she brought to the table. With the help of my advisor’s recommendations I was able to secure a good job right out of college. I graduated with an English degree and was able to build my resume up in a way that made me marketable.
This does not follow the STAR principle and did not covers the result and situation.
Which of the following questions would be best to ask your interviewer?
How has this organization changed since you joined? This is a good question because its open-ended yet personal to the interviewer. You are likely to hear information that you cannot find on the website.
What is a typical day at your organization? The answer to this question could be easily deduced by looking at the company website. Things like company culture and the type of company could lead you to figuring out this answer by yourself.
What is your organization’s culture? This is a tricky one because it seems like it would be a good question to ask, but it’s not. If you would like to ask about company culture make it more specific. The interviewer should be able to see where you’re coming from when you ask a question.