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Questions for behavioral interviews

·2 mins
  • Scope (of my role at current organization).
  • About me, as an individual:
    • Strengths.
    • Growth areas, in terms of technical skills.
    • Growth areas, in terms of leadership skills.
    • Feedback that surprised you.
    • What inspires me.
    • What drains me.
  • Leadership skills:
    • Conflict with teammate. (Could be an example where you changed your mind.)
    • Conflict with cross-functional team.
    • Conflict with a partner/cross-organization team.
    • Engagement with a partner team that went well.
    • Engagement with a partner team that didn’t go well.
    • Gave feedback to a peer or junior.
    • Handle shift in priorities from leadership.
    • Best mentorship relationship.
    • Situation where you needed crisp communication.
    • Acted in a tense/ambiguous situation where you didn’t have enough data.
    • Some cross-function partner or someone from another organization wasn’t performing well.
  • Manager specific:
    • What do you look for in your manager?
    • Feedback to upper management.
    • Conflict with manager == feedback to manager.
  • Project retrospective (for one large project):
    • What would you do differently if re-starting from scratch?
    • Technical and organizational challenges. (Not the same as trade off.)
    • Technical trade off.
    • Business trade off.
  • Biggest:
    • Technical problem == road block.
    • Risk that paid off == decision that went against popular opinion.
    • Failure == risk that didn’t pay off as expected.
    • Operational event.
    • Operational process you setup.
    • Short-term vs long-term trade off.
    • Something you did for the team that you are proud of.