Behavioral interview questions and sample answers
Before we get into the behavioral questions, first ask yourself, what are all the milestones in your journey that have led you here and what is your professional story?
Unless you have this figured out, there is not point in moving forward as you'll get stumped by the interviewer if a slightly tricky question is asked. Click here to access and fill our template (It should take 10 minutes) and let's walk through career path.
Great! Now you've completed the career milestone exercise, let's dive into the questions.
In every behavioral interview, there are certain questions that are common to all positions and a few others that are specific to the role. Below, we'll cover some of the common questions asked in FAANGMULA companies which are also applicable to other companies irrespective of the industry.
Generic Questions:
Q. Tell me about yourself
Remember- you won’t have a lot of time to cover your life story so unless there are follow up ‘why’ questions on the points that you bring up, don’t try to get into a lot of details as that won’t be useful for anyone. Try to talk about your work profile and break that down by saying what your team’s role is, what you specifically do in it, what are the areas that you touch on and then lastly, summarize the answer by again highlighting the focus areas in your role.
Below are 2 examples where we can see how two interviewees could answer the same question and thus elicit a different response from the interviewer for the answers that they provide.
Interviewee #1: Starts talking about his/her life in a chronological order and after having spent >1 minute talking about the past, comes to the current role that he/she is working on. Eventually, the candidate realizes that he/she might be running out of time and thus starts wrapping up the answer quickly in the interest of time.
Interviewee #2: I’m working with <company name> as a <title> for the last <# years> as a part of the <team’s name> where the goal is to <elaborate on the goal> and my responsibilities are mainly related to <state your responsibilities> where I focus on the following areas <mention the focus areas of your role and the impact that you have>. To summarize, I'll say my role has a lot of <responsibilities> with a lot of focus on <focus areas listed above>.
Tips:
- Record this answer in your voice and keep doing it repeatedly until you get a hang of the answer’s flow.
- Try summarizing your points towards the end when possible
Q. Why are you looking to join our company/why are you a good fit/why do you want to leave your current role?
Highlight the Social impact of the company, followed by the futuristic innovations/future plan and then round it off by highlighting their robust revenue/income growth (speak numbers here if possible so that your research and passion for the company comes through).
Template- I’d like to join <company name> because of the following 3 reasons:
<company’s xyz initiative> is something that resonates with my set of values, mainly pertaining to <value that you want to highlight> because of <xyz reasons>. Also, the impact that <company> is having through its innovations such as <xyz> is what excites me. Lastly, its robust financial performance where <company> earned $$xbn last quarter which was a jump from <x% to y%> is something that shows the company is heading in the right direction. So because of these 3 reasons <repeat the reasons here>, i would love to join <company>.
Tip- Whenever you provide a list of reasons, it helps the interviewer understand that you’re not going to drag your answer.
– <Saurabh>TODO : add pre-prep structure
The candidate will prepare the story line / script for as per his resume or requirements for next job
Novelty
Customer impact
New skills / tech ( java / program management /
Q. Why this role?
Specifically mention the top 2-3 characteristics that impress you about this role. Tie those characteristics back to your strengths and the work that you like to do and the things that you bring to the table. Also, tie it to your future vision so that the interviewer clearly understands what you are looking for from a long term standpoint.
Template- I found this role interesting because it has a lot of emphasis on <skill 1> <skill 2> and since the current team is focused on doing <x>, I believe I can bring these skills to the table and help the team succeed. Also, I see myself working on initiatives in the future where I can leverage this experience and do <y>. Because of these 2 reasons, I would like to pursue this role.
Tip- Ensure that you’re tying it back to the initial tell me about yourself question.
Q. Tell me about a difficult decision you've made in the last year
Key factors to remember here are: the decision should be from your recent professional role, it should indeed be a difficult decision and not something where it was a simple fix. Try to think of examples where you really had to make a significant tradeoff while making the decision.
Q. What are some of your strengths/weaknesses?
Stakeholder Management/ Conflict Management:
Q. How did you manage a difficult stakeholder?
Areas being tested: Negotiation, Stakeholder management
Key area to highlight here is collaboration and ability to influence.
Q. Important decision where you went against your manager.
Talk about the why behind your approach and how it was different from what your manager was suggesting. Ensure that you speak about your eventual result achieved. Key areas being tested are influencing without authority, collaboration and ability to manage up.
Q. Complex challenge where i had to talk with many people. Who all were the stakeholders that were impacted? whom did you chat with and what was the result?
Stakeholder management and influencing without authority.
Core Project Management:
Q. Worked on a end to end project. What actions did you take and what were the results obtained?
Q. Tell me about a time when you had multiple important projects to finish and how did you prioritize them.
Essence here is to blow your own trumpet and give a rundown of things that you’ve managed concurrently. Interviewers like to hear about the Pareto principle where you took its help to prioritize your initiatives.
Q. Tell me about a project that wasn't going to meet its deadline and how you minimised or confronted the consequences.
Areas being highlighted here are communication management, stakeholder management and your ability to clearly manage expectations with both the core team and executive sponsor. Key here is to ensure your communication channels with the exec sponsor are clearly defined.
Q. Process transitioned to another person?
Process management/reengineering. Highlight your PM skills here.
Q. Worked against a tight deadline?
Highlight the importance of the project and how you managed to make the most of your time by prioritizing this project over other projects.
Q. In your first year on the job, how would you go about planning new processes?
Bring all of your project management skills to the forefront and talk about all the different areas that would make a new project and its processes effective. Mainly talk about six sigma + process improvement part.
Q. Scenario- We're having issues with our external vendor telephone service as part of the international expansion for Japan. How would you manage that project?
Initiating, planning, executing, m&c, closing
Risk Management:
Q. Tell me about a time when you had to look around the corners and call out a risk that eventually transpired into a project?
Example- While doing analysis for one of my projects, I observed the following <state the observations on which kpi was getting impacted>. As i looked further into the numbers, i saw a downward/upward spike in these numbers and thus i did a pareto analysis on what were some of the factors driving this spike.
Q. Project involving large sets of data. How did you derive insights from it?
Area mainly tested: Data analysis. Also, do highlight your leadership capabilities since that shows how you’re not just someone who does data analysis but also is able to see the zoomed out picture.
Ambiguity:
Q. Example where you've scaled up a program quickly/ had a lot of ambiguity to tackle?
Key factors: Leadership, ability to connect the dots. Do remember that you should focus on the why behind this question and also give some context as to why this was an ambiguous endeavor to begin with.
Q. Tell me about a time you figured out what to do when an unknown/undiagnosed issue surfaced that no one knew about? How did you find it? What experiences did you apply to fix it? What actions did you put in place to make sure it does not happen again
Again, the area being tested is your ability to manage ambiguous issues. Key here is to not reinvent the wheel, instead you should highlight your project management acumen and ask about historical documents if any and then go from there.
Q. Didn't have enough data yet we made a decision
Ability to deal with ambiguous data and highlighting relevant insights
Q. Standards and delivery/Quality was present but you went against it. Invent and simplify principle
Key area being tested here is your ability to separate the wheat from the chaff and question the existing processes that weren’t proving to be useful for the team’s objective.
Q. Problem that started out as a small one and you scaled up the solution?
This answer will show how you’re able to see both the short and long term picture of a project and provide solutions accordingly.
Q. Different options were present and you chose the way of thinking that was unique. How did you decide on it?
Key areas: Lateral thinking, unique perspective
Q. It wasn't in my job description but i went above and beyond to bring it up and pursued that effort. Why did i think about it?
Leadership:
Q. Took an important business decision without consulting your manager?
Highlight why speed was of prime importance and why you did what you did
Q. Uncovered a problem, communicated the whys and drove it towards a solution?
Again, highlight your ability to see the big picture and then derive analysis based on the data that’s available.
Q. Questioned the status quo?
Ability to see things beyond what they currently are
For all of these questions, it’s better to answer in STARL format so that the learning aspect is embedded in your answer itself.
Also, remember to reiterate the question to confirm that you’re clearly and correctly understanding the question being asked. If you’re unable to understand the question clearly, that would take you down the wrong alley so it’s important to understand the question in the first place.
One of the things that people struggle with is the timing on these answers. Key thing to remember is that if you can keep your STARL answers within the 4-5 min time range, that would be in the sweet spot. Exceeding the 5 min mark is ok in some of these answers but it shouldn’t touch the 7 min mark. For introduction/why this company kind of questions, stay in the 2-3 mins range.
A few of the folks could be asked case related/scenario based questions too. These questions can usually be categorized as a take home excel whose data needs to be understood and then presented to senior leadership.
Questions that a candidate could potentially ask:
Q. What would success look like to you say 6 months to 1 year in this role?
Q. Ask questions about the company’s future plans. Talk about one of the articles that you might’ve read and connect it to your question.
Q. What has the interviewer’s experience been like so far on the team and with the company?
Examples:
For questions related to why this company/role, key is to break down the answer into 3 parts that is speak about the company’s values and how they appeal to you, then speak about how well the company is doing from a performance standpoint and lastly to round it off, you can speak about the company’s future bets. <Keep giving examples to indicate that you’ve done good amount of research>.
A Key tip during a program manager interview round is to stick to the star format and focus on the impact/results.
Preparing smart questions customised for the interviewer who is interviewing you is also important.
Ensure that you go through your interviewers’ linkedin profiles to research their areas of expertise + to ask questions that are relevant to their prior experience.
Program Manager Resume Tips (Few tips below would apply for other roles too):
Follow the star format while mentioning your experience
List out your skills and summary at the start of your Resume so that the recruiter gets an idea of
Use action verbs to explain your experience. Instead of just saying worked on xyz project, mention that you led or spearheaded xyz operation
Avoid mentioning your hobbies/interests if they’re not connected to the role
Always draft your Resume in a chronological manner with the latest experience at the top
Try sticking to a one page format
<Provide examples of good v/s bad Resumes for reference>
<Also, provide an example preferably in the form of a video where you modified an existing weak Resume and made it a robust one>
Quantify as much as possible so that your impact is clearly understood.
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