Check out our list of behavioral interview questions from top tech companies.
Updated in 2023
The behavioral interview is important for interviewers to understand who you are and how you can fit into the culture of the company.
We created a list of 47 behavioral interview questions so you can prepare for your onsite and nail it with confidence.
Behavioral interview questions
Behavioral Interview Questions – Teamwork
- Tell me about a time when you solved a conflict at work.
- Do you prefer to work with a team or on your own?
- Describe a situation where you had to lead a group that had difficulties. How did you handle it?
- Have you handled a difficult situation with a coworker? How?
- How do you collaborate with others?
Behavioral Interview Questions – Adaptability
- Tell us about how you’ve dealt with unexpected deadlines or project scope changes.
- Describe the project that you had the most trouble with. What would you have done differently?
- What did you do when the requirement from the stakeholder is vague
- How do you stay organized?
- How do you work with conflicting priorities?
Behavioral Interview Questions – Time Management
- If there was one obstacle or issue that you can foresee that might prevent you from hitting a deadline, what would it be?
- Tell me about a time you went beyond what was expected.
- If you know there are 2 improvements that need to be made, but can only make 1, how would you prioritize?
- What do you do when you are procrastinating?
- Talk about a time when you had multiple requests from different people in the company. How did you handle them?
Behavioral Interview Questions – Communication
- How do you defend your opinion to team members and stakeholders?
- How would you handle a situation in which you were getting a lot of negative feedback in the middle of a presentation?
- How do you make a case for your vision and opinion?
- What advice would you give someone younger than you who is trying to come up in the field?
- What do you do if you disagree with your boss?
Behavioral Interview Questions – Motivation and Values
- What was the biggest takeaway from your current job that you’ll carry with you throughout your career?
- Why do you want to change jobs? Why now?
- Talk about your approach to solving difficult problems
- Do you find that you get overwhelmed often at work? How do you combat that?
- Who has influenced you in your career?
Practicing responses to these behavioral interview questions help you before you walk into your interviews, but stay flexible. Keep track of examples and anecdotes that can answer various questions without it sounding rehearsed.
Know the structure
Every behavioral interview has the same structure: introduce yourself, resume deep dive, specific questions, why this company, and your questions. Make sure you have your elevator pitch ready for the introduction. It should be 1-2 minutes and talk about your education, experience, and projects, and conclude with a summary of yourself as a candidate and a preview of “why this company.”
When crafting a response to “why this company,” keep this structure in mind: Mission or product first, approach or values second (ex: “Nobody else approaches it like you. You’re being more scientific than ever before”). Avoid perks, salary, and everything else.
Be specific
Regardless of the behavioral interview question, you don’t want your answers too long. Focus on numbers, context, the reasoning behind decisions, technologies or algorithms, and examples.
So, rather than: “I built this awesome app that was like Google Maps for my office floor. There were a lot of really hard algorithms involved, but eventually, everyone liked it.”
Say something like, “I developed an app to navigate between rooms on my office floor. I decided to use my simplified version of [algorithm] to do it, which worked pretty well since we could launch it to all 50 members of my team.”
Mix “I” and “we”
When it comes to taking credit, if you were on a team, use “I” to denote your responsibilities, be very clear, and then use “we” to give your team credit for overall accomplishments. Alongside that, mention how grateful you are or how much you learned. You don’t want to brag when answering behavioral interview questions.
Stay focused
We see this often when interviewees think adding more information improves their answers. And while it’s important to tell your story and answer their question, it’s better to have them ask for more info than for you to run on and on with your answer. For example, “I implemented three core features in this project. At a high level, I implemented a revamped landing page, social media sharing, and referrals. Happy to go into more detail on any of them if you’d like. With these features, we reached 100,000 views in a week.”
Avoid negative language
This is an opportunity for you to talk about your great work. Even if the project wasn’t launched or it didn’t have the desired result, you don’t need to use negative language in your responses. Avoid overly pessimistic words like fail and disappoint, critical words like stupid or idiot, and self-degrading words like lazy or clueless.
Here’s an example of something you can say if you didn’t get the desired result: “We were able to raise $40,000 in our crowdfunding campaign, which was great, but we decided to use different strategies because we needed more funding to be to reach our goals. We looked into licensing and continued development with what we could.”
With these questions and knowledge, you should be able to go into your behavioral interviews prepared and confidently.
About Pathrise
Pathrise is a career accelerator that works with students and young professionals 1-on-1 so they can land their dream job in tech. With these tips and guidance, we’ve seen up to an 80% increase in interview success from our fellows in the program.
If you want to work with any of our advisors 1-on-1 to get help with your software engineer interviews or with any other aspect of the job search, become a Pathrise fellow.
Apply today.
