Behavioural Interview

Apart from Technique questions, the interviewer asks Behavioral questions to know your personality, to understand your resume more deeply, and just to ease you into an interview. They are important questions to see whether you are fit the team or the company culture or not.

Interviewer seeks the candidate who is confident, specific, humble and not arrogant.

Similar to technical questions, we need to prepare these questions in advance. The interview does not want to see the candidate who is faltering, or trying to make up a story carelessly when being asked.

The questions can be predicted and controlled.

1) Question Types and Tips

1.1) What do you know about [something] ?

For this question type, the interview is likely to ask you about your knowledge of the company, the role you are applying for, or any relevant facts. Remember researching the company website, reading "About us" section and "Career section". Because they are the facts, you cannot trump up a story, otherwise you will easily be caught.

1. The interviewer knows all the fact in most cases. Therefore, to standout, try to impress the interviewer by add your impression or your signature into the answer instead of listing or interpreting, for example:
   • I am impressed by the ability of applying AI in the production of Company X, instead of Company X applies AI in the production.
   • When I was hiking with my friends, we reached the top of the mountain. All of our phones lost the signal, except the phone using Company X's signal, instead of Company X's signal can cover mountainous area (customise your story)
2. Read the company culture code, and subtly mix that into your answer. Refer the example of Amazon's 14 principles

1.2) Describe a time you [did something]

It is also called Competency-based questions. They are designed to let you talk about a real-life challenge that you have faced. Because it is an open answer, so this time you can make up your own story. Essentially, competency questions help employers understand how you’ve previously dealt with particular situations, tasks or people. Tips:

1. You split your answer into four sections in STAR structure. STAR stands for:
   • Situation: Describe the background or context.
   • Task: Describe the task or challenge you were faced with.
   • Action: Explain the action you took, and how and why you did it.
   • Result: Describe how it ended, what you accomplished and what you learned from the situation. Relate the skill or ability you are illustrating back to the vacancy you’re applying for and explain why it’s useful.
2. The "Result" of your story should always be positive. You should emphasise how your actions affected the outcome. Results are best evidenced by numbers. Don’t be shy about expressing how you delivered value for your employer.
3. Read the company culture code, and subtly mix that into your answer. That reminds the interviewer to check his check sheet that you have discovered about the company.
4. Try to group this type of question, as some questions share the same answer.

Example: Tell me about a challenging interaction with a teammate (from a book Cracking the coding interview)

Answer:

Situation: On my operating systems project, I was assigned to work with three other people. While two were great, the third team member didn't contribute much. He stayed quiet during meetings, rarely chipped in during email discussions, and struggled to complete his components. This was an issue not only because it shifted more work onto us, but also because we didn't know if we could count on him.

Task: Get him back with the team and ask him to collaborate to achieve the common goal.

Action: I did three things.

• First, I wanted to understand why he was acting like this. Was it laziness? Was he busy with something else? I struck up a conversation with him and then asked him open-ended questions about how he felt it was going. Interestingly, basically out of nowhere, he said that he wanted to take on the writeup, which is one of the most time intensive parts. This showed me that it wasn't laziness; it was that he didn't feel like he was good enough to write code.
• Second, now that I understand the cause, I tried to make it clear that he shouldn't fear messing up. I told him about some of the bigger mistakes that I made and admitted that I wasn't clear about a lot of parts of the project either.
• Third and finally, I asked him to help me with breaking out some of the components of the project. We sat down together and designed a thorough spec for one of the big component, in much more detail than we had before. Once he could see all the pieces, it helped show him that the project wasn't as scary as he'd assumed.

Result: With his confidence raised, he now offered to take on a bunch of the smaller coding work, and then eventually some of the biggest parts. He finished all his work on time, and he contributed more in discussions. We were happy to work with him on a future project.

1.3) Useful words using in the interview

These words are strong enough. They neither exaggerate, nor lower your ability and skill.

Verb: enable, allow, facilitate, equip, help, assist, support, provide, simplify, satisfy, delight, believe.

Adjective: excellent, solid, great, profound skillful, confident, deep, effective, efficient, advantageous, beneficial.

2) Interview Preparation Grid

Go through each of the projects or components of your resume and ensure that you can talk about them in detail. Filling out a grid like this may help:

3) Frequently Asked Questions

3.1) Questions about knowledge

1. Tell me about yourself
2. What do you know about the company?
3. Why did you apply to this position (why do you want to work here) ?
4. What do you think you will be doing in this job?
5. What are your strengths?
6. What are your weaknesses?
7. Why should we hire you (the right person)?
8. Where do you see yourself in a years’ time?
9. What are your future longterm aspirations?
10. Do you have any questions you would like to ask us?
11. What do you think about new innovation / creative that has to be brought using technologies?
12. What is one question you would like to ask the CEO?

3.2) Questions about experience

1. Describe a time when you had a month or more (limited time) to prepare for an important project.
2. Describe a situation when you failed (negative experience).
3. Describe a situation when you have to prioritize tasks.
4. Describe a time when you set challenging goals for a project.
5. Describe your proudest achievement to date.
6. Describe your best team you worked in and what role did you play.
7. Describe a time when you were stuck.
8. Describe a time when you have conflict.
9. Describe a time you dealt with a difficult customer.
10. Describe a time when you went above and beyond for a team member.
11. Describe a time when you responded to complain.
12. Describe a time when you had challenge (were out of comfort zone / adapt a change)?