🧙‍♂️ How to prepare the behavioral interview

A step-by-step framework to solve this interview + 🎁 Free Notion Template

Dec 17, 2023

There are behavioral signals in purely technical interviews, such as the System Design Interview and the Coding Interview, especially doing a code review.

Yet, most companies have specific loops for behavioral interviews.

They assess that you have the track record your resume shows. They also assess your level of seniority. The same question is answered differently depending on your tenure.

Some people would argue that this is the most important interview. I also think so. Your tech skills need to be decent enough to pay the bills. But after you meet the tech bar for the level you are interviewing, you want to ensure you are the candidate everyone would like to work with.

This post is one of the 4 post series I’m writing about technical interviews after I passed my SDE2 interviews at Amazon for an internal transfer. If you are interested in the others, check them out here:

🗺️ How to prepare the technical interview (Contains an explanation of my study framework)
🧙‍♂️ How to prepare the behavioral interview. (this post).
🤖 How to prepare the coding interview.
🐲 How to prepare the system design interview.

📝 The preparation framework

1) Identify the criteria they use to evaluate

This interview seems unstructured. It’s not.

Each interviewer has some clear competencies assigned to them for the interview and a rubric to evaluate the answers.

Interviews are like an exam, you want to know the lessons in scope. The company culture page is your syllabus. If there’s none, check generic interview questions.

This was very easy for Amazon, the culture page are the leadership principles I am very used to.

2) Make a list of stories

Ideally, you have journaled or kept a brag doc. Now it’s time to read through those entries. You won’t remember the details only with your memory.

Pick the ones where you overcame obstacles with your actions.

3) Match anecdote to evaluation criteria

Write them in the STAR-with-obstacles format I propose below. Even if you know the story, you won’t transmit it the right way out of the blue.

Interviewers will be happy that you have a proper structure, it makes their jobs easier.

You can repeat stories in multiple criteria. Because the evaluation criteria are different, the follow-up questions will take the story in another direction.

Still, make sure you show multiple stories, interviewers will share them in the debrief and it’s a bad signal if all get the same story. It means you have done nothing else relevant, which indicates low tenure.

🗺️ The interview framework

The STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Results) format is well-known in interviews. But it’s not ideal, it focuses on the problem and not the person. The interview is not an acquisition of the project, but hiring the person.

🦺 STAR-with-obstacles format

I like the STAR-with-obstacles approach. You double down on the complications, focusing on the main character of the story: you.

Around the middle of your story, you want a “U shape”. The obstacles are getting you deeper and deeper into a hole. At this point, it should seem very hard to succeed in your shoes. Your actions as the hero of the story are getting you out of it.

Situation: Explain why the situation is relevant. Set the stage for a good story. Talk with passion about the problem to solve.
Task: Explain what you had to do. This is the bridge between the problem and taking action towards a solution.
Start enumerating obstacles. Make sure the complications keep the story engaging. Add the problems at the right time, when things seemed to go on track.
Actions: The Northstar of your actions is solving the problem you explained in the situation section. But we added the obstacles that make it complicated. Show your actions to overcome them.
Results: Talk about the actual outcome of your actions, not of the project. Don’t show yourself perfect. You relate to a hero who has weaknesses like the rest of humans. You relate to the underdog, not to the story with a perfect ending

Add the learnings at the end

I do this in my preparation, and I don’t necessarily communicate the learnings in a 10-minute monologue. But it’s a common follow-up question from the interviewer. Get ready to talk about your learnings, the outcome, and what would you do differently.

Learnings: While in these stories you won’t focus on the weaknesses, be vocally self-critical to show you have grown from that experience. Show that you are looking for growth areas even in these success stories.

⚙️ Preparation resources

🧑‍🎓 Deliberate study time

You can read about emotional intelligence and storytelling. But this is not a requirement,

This is the interview with the least study time needed.

Some recommended books if you have the time to indulge in reading:

📚 Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves
📚 Leadership 2.0 by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves
📚 How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie
📚 Unleash the Power of Storytelling by Rob Biesenbach
📚 The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr

🧑‍🏭 Deliberate practice time

The goals of your practice are two:

Goal #1: Remember the bullet points for the key situations in your story

To memorize, use active recall. Pick a question and tell your story without looking at your notes. You can start by talking about your story while looking at the bullet points until you don’t need them.

Distribute this practice over time. It helps assimilate the information and you counter the forgetting curve with spaced repetition.

If you don’t know anything about these learning techniques and have time to read, I recommend the book 📚 Learning How to Learn by Dr. Barbara Oakley.

Goal #2: Get fluent verbalizing and connecting those bullet points on the go.

You’ll get fluent through repetition. Schedule a few sessions of this practice close to the interview

When I first interviewed at Amazon more than two years ago, I was not confident in my spoken English. For a few months, I did 2 sessions of 30 minutes per week reading aloud in English.

I knew the meaning of many words, but not their pronunciation. Reading aloud forced me to search and remember their pronunciation.

🛡️ Siege your brain time

Watch videos of behavioral questions on YouTube. For big companies like Amazon, there are dedicated channels (link).

Focus on videos oriented to your job family. A great behavior for a manager it’s not for an engineer and vice-versa.

If you want to use the jargon with confidence, make it your everyday. Talk like this with your peers. Don’t fake talking about things you don’t truly understand.

Other advice

🫵 Talk about what YOU did, not what YOUR TEAM did.

Your actions are a subset of all the actions that contributed to the result. Focus on the results of your actions and not the results of the project.

🧘‍♂️ Be flexible

Don’t get too fixated on how you prepared and structured the story. Interviewers care about the competency they were assigned. When the interviewer nudges you in a direction, be flexible to catch the signal and pivot.

👨‍🦳 Talk from real experience

Talk from your real experience. The same question is answered in different ways depending on your tenure. You won’t answer with confidence if you don’t talk from real experience, you don’t understand the problem the same way.

In tech, there are no demotions, only promotions and PIPs. They won’t hire you unless you show you are already operating at that level.

🦹 Never talk about villains.

This is the main difference with regular stories. Nobody is a villain in reality. If you frame people in your same company as a villain, you are showing you are not a team player.

🛹 Don’t follow the entire preparation framework

If you are interviewing with many companies, focus on the stories. Don’t waste too much time on researching the company culture and matching the stories to each criterion.

In the end, all companies have the same principles with different wording:

Amazon: Bias for action
Facebook: Move fast and break things
Revolut: Get (sh)it done

Share Strategize Your Career

🎯 Conclusion

It seems easy to talk from your experience.

Yet, this interview needs preparation.

Preparing the right format ensures the information is communicated with the best signal-to-noise ratio. Interviewers are also people and they weren’t there to see by themselves the stories you tell. They see the stories through your words.

Preparing the right stories ensures you transmit signals that indicate you are a good fit for the role. For most of us, our work is private and there may even be NDAs that prevent us from talking about it. If interviewers can’t go and find themselves about your work, pick your best work for the interview.

Check the 🎁 Free Notion template. You’ll find templates applying this framework and one of the stories that I used in my last interviews for an internal transfer to an SDE2 role at Amazon.