Interview Series Part II: Use these tips to pass Behavioral Interviews!

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This is my 2nd post in the "Machine Learning/Data Science Interview" series. The first post I wrote focused on Technical interviews which can be found here. In this article, I am sharing on Behavioral interviews. This is not a cookiecutter but purely a guide that might help navigate someone who is going to face a Behavioral round. I intend to articulate my learnings and share my experience with my fellow readers that I got while appearing in different companies!

Behavioral Interviews are more casual and they would like to know more about you and how you would fit in the organization. It might not be as aggressive as Technical rounds but it is really important that it should be not be taken as a piece of cake. These seem to be simple questions, but I would highly recommend preparing them in advance. It is important that you show a great character who can fit smoothly into the organization. Some of the things they really assess you are on:

How you approached situations, your leadership, problem-solving capabilities, communication, teamwork, etc.
What motivates and drives you. What are your past achievements and values? What makes you passionate about the work and that will help the organization. Are you disciplined and focused enough?
How good of a team player you are and will be in the organization. Suppose you are sympathetic enough and accommodate other team players’ opinions by coming to common grounds.
How are you with your soft skills? How confident and structured you are when answering. Try to be more conversational and don’t make it a pure monologue.

They usually last somewhere from 30–45 minutes. It is partially covered in all the rounds of interviews directly/indirectly but this round is conducted with a total focus on Behavioral skills. It is also important to know that people who usually conduct interviews are usually less technical people in most cases like Product Managers, Project Managers, HR, etc. Now, there are 3 general and important tips I have with a focus on these types of interviews are:

Prepare your answers: If you google, most of the questions are widely available and 95% of the time you will get the same questions. There is not a correct answer or a specific way of addressing a specific question. However, you must answer them based on your experience. If your answers are prepared well enough in advance you will sound seamless during the interviews.

List your stories: Yes, it is important that you list down all the stories based on the questions you find online. Stories may be based on your leadership, teamwork, tighter deadlines, working with the boss, stress management, etc. Articulate and present those situations in the best way possible. Write down relevant points so that you can practice beforehand and be fluent when asked during the interview.

Be patient: Develop a practice of listening to the question and forming a more relevant story to the situation. Do not rush yourself in answering directly. It is ok to take some seconds before you answer the question by the interviewer but your answer should be well-framed and to the point!

Beyond all the tips above a vital framework to adapt to for Behavioral Interviews is the STAR technique. STAR stands for Situation, Task, Action, and Result. This is an important structure to maintain when answering specially situational-based questions. It helps you remain concise and to the point. It allows you to create a clear story based on your real-life examples and not fumbling on unnecessary details. I am going to provide an example answer based on a sample question. For e.g. if you were asked: "Can you describe a time when your boss was not around and you had to take care of an urgent situation. What did you do?"

Situation:

This part is mainly to start answering the question and set the flow to your Action and Result. Spend as little time as you can on this section. For e.g. you can say: "I can remember one of the times when a presentation had to be put together on a last-minute for leadership and my boss was out of office"

Task:

Start mentioning the specific tasks that you did for the situation described. Be specific like: "As a senior member of the team it was my responsibility to prepare the presentation with the help of other team members."

Action:

Mention the actions you took for the task to be accomplished. I would say: "I scheduled an immediate meeting with all my team members and took their opinion on what can be done to complete the presentation". When talking about Action an important thing specifically is to focus on "I" rather than "we". The interviewer here specifically is interested to know what specifically you did for that particular situation.

Result:

Your response should address what happened to the action that was taken. I would say: "The leadership was very happy with the presentation and gave them a good idea for the next steps about the product". You can also mention "They really applauded me for the presentation! I really learned a lot by preparing the presentation and unlocking my potential of accomplishing it in such a quick time." It could be also like: "My project helped the organization to save X million dollars!"

Remember Action and Result are most important! The interviewer wants to know what did you do and how impactful it was. So make sure you give a quantifiable result if possible. If it is not quantifiable, try providing a result that is impressive.

Final minutes:

The interviewer will spare 5–10 minutes towards the end to ask any questions you might have. Again, this is a good time to have a good conversation with the interviewer and know more about the organization. You should ask questions that show how much interest you have in the organization and are willing to learn more about them. Some questions can be like:

"Can you help me walk through company culture and values"?
"How do you envision the future of the organization in the next 5–10 years". This shows that you are focused on growth and you want to stay for the long term!
"How are the employee assessed and what different types of programs are offered to help in career growth".

Some sample questions during the interview:

Tell me a time when you had a conflict with your colleague and what did you do?
Tell me about a time when you felt happy about your work?
Tell me how you handle stress?
Tell me about a time when you disagreed with your boss? How did you handle the situation?
Tell me about a time when you had to make a difficult decision?
Tell me about your 5 weaknesses and 5 strengths. (Does not need STAR approach)
Tell me where you see yourself in 5 years. (Does not need STAR approach)
Why do you want to work for us? (Does not need STAR approach)

Finally, I would like to conclude this article by mentioning that practice flavors of different behavioral and situation-based questions by answering them based on your past experience. I used to practice it with my better half. Her feedback helped me a lot in improvising and shaping my answers. This helped me a lot in getting better at conversations. You will find a lot of these questions online. Please do not make up situations. Try to be as original as you can be, based on your past work. They might help you to pass the interviews but you will fail when such situations are really encountered!

If you have an important point or something that you have learned from your experiences please do not hesitate to comment. Thank you for taking out the time to read this post. I hope it will help you in landing your dream job! More of such posts to come! Stay tuned…..