How to Ace the Behavioral Interview (+ Free Study Guide, Questions & Answers)

Storytelling for Success

When it comes to recruiting for some of the most coveted jobs in finance, consulting and tech, we often think of rigorous technical interviews: walking through a DCF for investment banking, estimating market sizes for management consulting or writing pseudocode for software engineering or product management.

At least, that’s what I think of.

Although technical interview questions deserve ample preparation, over-indexing on them while ignoring behavioral interview questions is even more dangerous. In fact, some of the most important questions you’ll answer come in the form of:

• “Tell me about a time when you __________”

• “Give me an example of when you __________”

• “Describe a situation when you __________”

These seemingly straightforward phrases are tell-tale signs of a behavioral interview. Unfortunately, candidates who answer them on the fly often struggle to come up with relevant examples on the spot and stumble through their responses. With a little preparation, you can turn these questions into an easy home run for your interview.

🤔 What is a Behavioral Interview?

Behavioral interview questions assess candidates based on their past performance. Instead of asking hypothetical questions such as “How would you resolve a conflict between coworkers?” interviewers ask empirical questions such as “Tell me about a time you observed a conflict between coworkers. How did you handle it?” By probing for concrete examples of your behavior and impact in the past, employers can predict how you might behave in the future.

Employers also use these questions to assess:

• Your interpersonal and communication skills

• Your “professional fit” — how qualified you are for the job you’re applying for

• Your “personal fit” with the company’s culture and values

❓Example Questions

The questions you will be asked relate directly to skills and attributes required for the role you are applying for. Common questions center around “soft” skills such as leadership, teamwork, decision-making, challenges, failures, conflict resolution, and the ability to work under pressure:

• Tell me about the leadership roles you’ve held and the impact you had on the organization(s).

• Tell me about a time you worked on a team. What was your role and your impact?

• What is your proudest accomplishment? What impact did you have and how did you achieve it?

• Tell me about a decision you made that wasn't popular. How did you go about influencing others and implementing it?

• How do you handle a challenge? Give an example.

• Tell me about a time that you failed. How did you overcome it?

• Tell me about a time you faced a conflict or disagreement with a coworker. How did you handle the situation?

• Tell me about a time you had to complete a project under a time crunch or with limited resources. How did you go about it?

• Describe a time when you were working on multiple projects at the same time. How did you keep from spreading yourself too thin?

• What’s the most important piece of constructive feedback that you’ve received from a manager? How did you process this feedback?

• What is the biggest risk you have taken in life?

Employers may also ask you to elaborate on specific experiences that demonstrate your relevant “hard” skills, such as:

• Give me an example of an analytical project that you worked on.

• Tell me about a tough software development problem and how you solved it.

• Tell me about a time you had to make a decision with limited information.

• Do you have any personal projects? Tell me about them.

• How would you explain [difficult technical concept] to a 5-year old?

• Tell me about your experience at [company X].

• Walk me through [bullet point Y on your resume].

📚 Preparing for the Behavioral Interview

To prepare for behavioral interviews, I recommend making a study guide just as you would for an exam. Make a copy of this document and adapt it for the role you’re applying for by following the steps below.

💼 Step 1: Study the job description.

Job descriptions are a gold mine of information. Not only do they tell you what your responsibilities will be if you are hired, but also what skills, knowledge and prerequisite experiences they’re looking for in an ideal candidate.

As you read the job description, highlight any key phrases that appear:

From the example above, we can tell that the employer is looking for someone who is:

• Scrappy / entrepreneurial

• Analytical / quantitative (bonus: experience in experimentation and reporting)

• Outcome-focused

• Leader (influencing without authority)

• Team player / cross-functional collaborator (bonus: experience working with Product teams)

• Strategic planner

• Process-builder and optimizer

📝 Step 2: Fill out the Story Grid.

Next, fill out a Story Grid. In a blank table, list your past roles in the first row and key skills / attributes you identified above in the first column. For each skill / attribute, you’ll need a relevant story from your past. To avoid reinventing the wheel, pick stories from your resume and try to cover multiple skills / attributes per story.

⭐ Step 3: Use the STAR framework to structure each story.

Everyone loves a well-told narrative, and interviewers are no exception. Pick 5 stories from the table above to master and write out using the STAR framework:

• Situation: Provide context. What was the problem or opportunity being faced by the customer, team, or company?

• Task: What was the task or project at hand?

• Action: What was your role? What steps did you specifically take?

• Result: What were the results and outcomes of your actions? Whenever possible, use metrics to prove your impact.

For each story, ask yourself: what key skills or attributes does this story demonstrate about you? If the story showcases a conflict you resolved or a failure / challenge you faced, you’ll also want to speak to what you learned from the experience and what you are changing about your behavior going forward.

Example

Below is an example of a real story I’ve used in the past when interviewing for product management roles in tech. In my answer, I’ve bolded past behaviors that indicate my readiness and qualifications for the PM role. Your story will certainly be different, but I’m sharing mine in case it is helpful as a starting point.

Question: Tell me about a time you overcame a challenge.

Answer: Sure, let me tell you about the time I built and launched the Driver Insights Tool in my role as a Global Business Analyst on the EMEA Central Ops team at Uber.

[Situation] To set some context, one of the biggest challenges facing Uber is poor driver sentiment resulting from low and unpredictable earnings. Drivers were coming into our customer support centers eager to learn how they could maximize their earnings, but our agents didn’t have the tools or data to provide specific and actionable feedback. As a result, they left feeling frustrated and discouraged, which depressed driver sentiment and customer support satisfaction even further.

[Task] So the task at hand was to build a tool that empowers our agents to provide personalized earnings advice to drivers in a GDPR-compliant manner.

[Action] To accomplish this, I traveled to our support center in Paris to conduct user interviews with drivers and agents to understand their needs and pain points. Next, I worked with the France Ops team to design and prioritize features for our minimum viable product. From our research, we determined that the most critical feature was an interactive earnings calculator that would indicate which hours of the week were most profitable to drive and allow drivers to plan their schedule ahead of time. Then, I coded the MVP using Python, Javascript and SQL and worked with Central Ops team to launch the pilot in 5 countries, including the UK, France, Netherlands, Pakistan, and Ghana.

[Result] Over the course of 20,000 interactions, we saw a 20% uplift in weekly supply-hours, 1% uplift in fares per hour and 4.9/5 driver and agent satisfaction score. After the success of the pilot, I transitioned ownership of the Driver Insights Tool to the Global CommOps team, who is now rolling the product out globally.

🗣️ Step 4: Practice, practice, practice!

No matter how many times you read through your bullet points or notes, it’ll never sound as good out loud as it does in your head (at least on the first try).

Practice your stories by rehearsing in front of the mirror or during a mock interview until you feel confident enough to tell each story by heart (and stay consistently under 2 minutes). Remember that much of communication is non-verbal — so sit up straight, make eye contact, and smile :) A little confidence and positive energy go a long way!

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