FAANG hiring managers share how to answer behavioral interview questions
beseen.com
beseen.com
I usually think up some random weaknesses that I consider irrelevant and speak about those just to prove that I can be self aware.
Also I think very big portion what I am saying is bullshit because I don't even particularly remember a lot of the details of the stories that would match those questions. So I have to come up with new stories or think up details for the stories I don't quite remember.
I passed Amazon interview process and all the other behavioral interviews I have ever attended so I must be doing something right despite my constant feeling of terror and anxiety.
I do think that I want to find a completely remote job now, I hate being in the office around people and I feel so much better when I can work from home. However I am afraid this might worsen the issue since I am not putting myself out there. But it doesn't seem to me as if putting myself out there has also helped my anxiety.
You’re not supposed to be honest. No one expects you to be honest. Everyone knows everyone knows it’s a game. It’s like the algorithm and data structure interview; it shows preparation and intelligence to be able to answer the questions well, whether your answers are based on a real event or pure fiction. If you can pretend to be a fantastic hire with lots of preparation there’s a reasonable chance you can actually show decent judgment if hired.
From OP:
>What’s your weakness?
>“Please don’t take the Michael Scott approach and turn this into a backhanded compliment (‘My biggest weakness is that I care too much’). I’d highly recommend giving an honest answer, and one that is as specific as possible and not handwavy.
Some people believe in this B.S.
It is actually quite often I can relate to Mr. Scott I can't help but to feel entirely sympathetic towards him.
It is actually a bit similar when girls say they want a "sweet, nice and caring" guy. But there are people who think they should follow those rules, fail and become resentful towards society for teaching them wrong things. This is just an observation.
> It is actually a bit similar when girls say they want a "sweet, nice and caring" guy.
In my experience, many women really do want nice, sweet, caring guys. It's just easy for men to think those are the only traits that matter, and that it's also fine to be timid, boring, insecure, clingy, and passive.
What they are really attracted to is confidence and often during teenage years and beginning of 20s as well, people who don't give a shit about anyone or anything are the most confident. Hence what happens is the girls are with those confident guys and guys who try to have the traits girls talk about are not. It is not easy to realize this if what you keep hearing from girls, media and films about what they look for in a man.
But actually we are not disagreeing.
This is why it fits with the honest criteria well as it is not clearly so black and white.
But let's say you don't have that bias and instead you're taking in ALL the evidence from society, film, books, etc... Well, then it's pretty damn obvious that women tend to like confident men. Look at the hero of pretty much every movie ever. Look at the popular guys in high school and college. The evidence is overwhelming.
Men and women alike want partners who make them feel special. Part of that is how you're treated by that person, sure, but part of it is how "valuable" that person is themselves. My dog can worship the ground I walk on, but at the end of the day he's still just a dog so it doesn't mean much :)
Interestingly, being honest will make you bold and empower to ask questions about sensitive issues you really care about in a job.
I have enough for 6 months for now, but it is not enough. I definitely need to be set for life to not feel that anxiety.
I can sympathize. But learn to lie without seeming to.
> What are your weakness? Crippling depression... I mean... I am an perfectionist...
"Well, I tend to think about things that may be interesting and even have implications for work at hand for a given organization, but may turn out to be impolitic. For example: to what degree do behavioral interview questions either resemble on the job activity, or correlate with performance? If that degree is small, what's the real function of behavioral interview questions? Now, I'm sure you'll agree, that's an interesting question, maybe even one that could be used to generate productive insights for the right company. But on the other hand, it may not be very well directed to my immediate interests and goals -- there may be a much more productive answer that's more likely to result in concrete positives, like a job offer. So, you know, probably something for me to work on."
(This supersedes my previous nose-thumbing answer, which was "Fire.")
Q: "What's your biggest weakness?" A: "Fire"
...seems like _such_ a Dwight Schrute saying (but he would be saying it unironically).
The HR emphasised a lot on preparing those 12 leadership principles and how it is really important for succeeding there. I walked into a room where a person on the other end of video conferencing started pounding me "tell me about a time" questions and whenever I started answering something genuine, he stopped me and said "No, No, No, you are supposed to answer from one of the 12 points that our dear lord CEO likes".
It honestly felt like a cult.
Behavioral interview questions typically sound something like "tell me about a time when you..."
There's lots of value in a real, well crafted behavioral interview question, but most of these examples are just run-of-the-mill low-value interview questions.
Not only is it a manipulative question, the response is basically meaningless if the candidate knows the game, because you’ll get back a scripted answer. Those who don’t know the game and answer honestly will only hurt their chances at getting the job.
The only question I think it worse is “what would your former manager say about you?”
Let's say you name a reasonable weakness that can easily be improved upon and that doesn't spell disaster for your ability to do your job. And let's say they reject you.
Either they're a terrible company to work for, or they have a huge mistake in their interview process. In the former case you don't want to work for a terrible company, so great, they just saved you years of pain. In the latter case, hey, mistakes happen. That's out of your control. Life is random sometimes. Besides, it's highly unlikely to be significant enough to tank your entire interview.
To the recipient, that is equally likely the rehearsed answer, because from high school on your told to think of one to reply to that question that fits into what your interviewer probably thinks is reasonable.
And there's the entire thing where some people answering truthfully would tell the interviewer things the interviewer isn't legally allowed to ask about, which is always a lovely strategy for running an interview.
In my experience working at places full of smart, talented, ambitious people looking to fill a role with a similar caliber of person: don't do that.
What are the strategies to expose hidden red flags?
If it comes from a HR person, the above attitude only backfires, but I don't want to work at a place with such a heavy HR filter put on everyone anyway.
As the interviewee, dodging a question with a fake trite answer because you think it's dumb is a great way to signal that you're abnormally uncooperative and/or bad at communicating. And this is a question largely meant to determine your communication skills.
It boggles my mind that people think an interview is a great place to display smug, passive-aggressive hostility. But then again, this is why we have interviews…
I'll keep it real: These aren't trick questions. They're simple, fair, and easy questions, and as such they're a good way to filter out people who have atrocious communication skills, or who possess mediocre theory of mind abilities, i.e. you can't put yourself in someone else's shoes and empathize with what they're looking for. If you find these questions particularly difficult, consider the strong possibility that you're lacking here.
"What's your biggest weakness?" This one is so simple it hurts: sincerely and honestly state a reasonable weakness. For example, "I've spent lots of time working solo, so while I've learned how to wear many hats, I don't have much experience working as part of a team." If you have terrible weaknesses that can't be overcome and would seriously impair your ability to do the job, you probably shouldn't be hired anyway. If you're completely unable to list any of your own shortcomings, then you lack self awareness.
The desire to lie and talk about a fake shortcoming often comes from a scarcity mindset: "I need this job so badly that I'll say anything they want to hear. I need to be perfect!" No, in most cases you don't. And if your interviewer is so unreasonable as to expect you to be flawless, is that someone you really want to work for? There are other jobs in the sea, keep looking.
"Tell me about a project you worked on." I couldn't agree more with what the person in the article said. Talk about YOUR contributions. The company is trying to hire YOU. What did YOU do? How did you do it, and why did it matter? Again, this is about communication. If you have a halfway decent theory of mind, it should be obvious what an employer would want to hear from you when you answer this question. Demonstrate your technical depth. Show that you're aware of and care about the impact your role has on the company's higher-level goals. That you can take initiative, drive things to completion, lead, execute quickly, handle complexity, learn over time, and make good decisions.
"Why do you want to leave your company?" People leave jobs. It's a fact of life. If you can't explain why you left, you seem clueless or even dodgy. Obviously if the job was still amazing for you, you'd still be there, so I can't agree with the article's advice to never mention anything negative. Just tell the truth, communicate it effectively, and address potential concerns. For example, if there were interpersonal issues, don't just dwell on those -- compare to other jobs you've had in the past where you've been able to work well with others together, and stress how important it is to you to work in an environment where people can communicate well, have good intentions, and support each other.
These questions just aren't that hard, and unless you have a seriously flawed track record, you don't have to be dishonest to give great answers. More importantly, those answers should be a reflection of YOURSELF. If a company doesn't like you, chances are you wouldn't like them. It's like dating. The goal is not to be a match with 100% of people. Just be your best self.
Corollary: If there's a test that you find particularly hard to pass in life, your knee-jerk reaction will always be to criticize the test. But it's important to consider your own potential shortcomings and ask, "Why is this test so hard for me?" That way lies self improvement.
That is a carefully rehearsed answer making the weakness look fixable instead of being serious weakness.
> sincerely and honestly state a reasonable weakness.
No, the question was "what's your biggest weakness", the "I haven't practiced doing this kind of work" is not a big weakness, everyone have bigger weaknesses than that due to their personality.
An honest answer would be "I am much slower learning technical things than my peers" or "I am competitive so I often come in conflict with my peers" or "I am afraid of conflict so I have a hard time making decisions" or "I get bored easily so I have a hard time finishing things" or "I constantly wear a mask so people never learn to know the real me" or "I don't like being proven wrong" or "I judge peoples competence by how much I like them rather than what they actually do" etc.
There is not a single person who doesn't have one weakness like that since many of them are a spectrum where no position is good. The "correct" answer is of course like you said, you give an easily fixable weakness like "I don't fully understand how deployment pipelines work since someone else did most of the work where I worked previously". But such answers are so easy to come up with, and are guaranteed not to be their biggest weakness, so you are basically checking whether they are fine with lying or lack self awareness.
First, there's absolutely nothing wrong with rehearsing your answers to common questions like this. If anything it allows you to present yourself in the best light, which every interviewer wants. Nothing is worse than turning down a good candidate who performed poorly because they didn't take the interview seriously.
Second, I literally thought of that answer off the top of my head in a few seconds. It wasn't actually rehearsed. I don't mean this to sound arrogant. There are many millions of others who can do the same -- think on their feet, take the interviewer's desires into account, and come up with a great answer. Some of these people will be interviewing at the same places as you. It's important to know that there is a wide range of communication abilities, just like there is a wide range of programming abilities.
> No, the question was "what's your biggest weakness", the "I haven't practiced doing this kind of work" is not a big weakness, everyone have bigger weaknesses than that due to their personality… such answers are so easy to come up with, and are guaranteed not to be their biggest weakness, so you are basically checking whether they are fine with lying or lack self awareness
This is splitting hairs. A reasonable person won't expect you riff through all your weaknesses to literally find the biggest one. They just want to hear something that's not too trivial.
I can confident assert that the best communicators would instantly be aware of this when posed the question in an interview. I know a lot of engineers (myself included) who have a higher-than-normal-or-useful tendency to take things as literally as possible, as if every sentence is a spec, which makes us (relatively) poor or at least awkward communicators.
> An honest answer would be "I am much slower learning technical things than my peers" or "I am competitive so I often come in conflict with my peers" or "I am afraid of conflict so I have a hard time making decisions" or "I get bored easily so I have a hard time finishing things" or "I constantly wear a mask so people never learn to know the real me" or "I don't like being proven wrong" or "I judge peoples competence by how much I like them rather than what they actually do" etc.
Sure, and you could totally go that route if you want to. And ideally you'd go a step further, demonstrate that whatever trait you list is actually innate in humans, and that it's taken you work to be aware of it and work on it.
The reality there is no objectivity in hiring, and there is no theoretically optimal global stack rank of software engineers: every person is unique and the needs of specific roles vary widely even within a single company. A lot of people treat getting a job as the continuation of a people-pleasing, hoop-jumping mentality that was honed over decades of education in the Victorian model.
I know it can be very frustrating to be rejected by seemingly clueless hiring managers for arbitrary reasons. I also know that some personality traits can be positive or negative depending on the internal situation on the team. You can never be sure of the illegitimacy of any given rejection, or whether it’s a blessing in disguise. For these reasons it’s better to focus on your craft and clear communication thereof rather than obsessing over the game-like aspects of hiring.
I disagree. People should be aware of the downsides to their strengths when they exist. One can be very creative but with the cost of a very scattered focus. One can drill down extremely deeply on problems but have trouble knowing when to move on.
Then again I think this whole exercise in telling people what managers want to hear in an interview is pointless, subjective ego masturbation.
What if your greatest weakness comes off as a false red flag? What if you know there's a high likelihood that they'll take it as such even though you're an above average fit for the position? Of course the manager wants an honest answer - this is the ideal answer from the manager's perspective, but piss poor advice for a candidate. Personally, I can't imagine putting an interviewee on the spot like that for such a poor, noisy signal.
Stuff like "Why are you leaving your previous company" has no good answers. The linked article says as much by saying "stay positive and avoid the negative" if there are no negatives or direct benefits you seek to achieve by moving then you wouldn't be interviewing, so they are basically advising you lie as it's the only "correct" answer.
When I have done hiring in the past I have generally just thrown out all of this nonsense and avoided sourcers/recruiters because everyone currently in hiring uses filters I don't agree with (education, resume etc) and don't sufficiently understand filters I DO care about (open source contributions, specific projects/teams within previous companies).
Then when it comes time to actually interview I am only interested in how well they can do 2 things. a) build stuff b) work with my team. b) is still fuzzy but atleast I have a more solid idea of what that might entail and can get a good feel by talking to the person and a) is pretty objective. Don't need any coding tests just need to talk to them about what they have built, how it works in sufficient detail and their opinions and thoughts on some sufficiently deep technical topics.
This mightn't scale as well but it sure beats all the nonsense and waste of money sources/recruiters/HR incur in the hiring pipeline.
After I find someone I want then and only then do I take their resume/etc to HR. Never let them act as a filter as they drop great people all the time and give me a stream of "good on paper but completely useless" people that have zero culture fit.
I couldn't care less IF or WHERE you went to university. If you learnt to build stuff at university, great, basement of your parents place, great, on a bench in the park while you were homeless trying to get this job, also great. Don't care how you learnt it only that you can.
Just like I don't give a rats ass if your resume doesn't have a single buzzword or anything in it. If it looks like you have worked on relevant stuff or at relevant places that is good enough.
This approach is all that has worked for me for getting genuinely good people, it takes time and effort but your team is worth it.
Excerpt From Developer Hegemony Erik Dietrich
To answe your question, the “soft skills” questions are no different then riddles. They are an arbitrary set of questions that instead of being defined by technical folks are instead created by HR people. It’s an arbitrary barrier to entry that allows HR to rank candidates.
Giving "honest answers" is dangerous. Even if it's diplomatic, the interviewer could decide it's the wrong answer. But you are also interviewing company, so if your answer is something you really care about a wrong answer probably indicates a bad company fit. For instance I remember I was interviewing at a startup, and I was concerned that their core business depended on a project where the deadlines and deliverables were not adjustable, so I asked them about WLB and long-term crunchtime. I was told that they disagreed with the premise of my question, they viewed the work as a marathon, not a sprint. Culturally it was very important to them that the workload and hours in the office were sustainable. I was really impressed with that answer. I also had a phone screen with an early stage startup where long hours were mentioned. And when I commented about it, the interviewer said he had no problem with it because he was really excited about the work and really liked his coworkers as friends. Both things are great to have at your job, but I thought that was a bad answer to a question about long work hours. Those were two completely different cultures, and I'd be fine knowing that the same "honest answer" cost me a job offer from one of those companies.
This is almost surely due to bias, almost everyone believe they are good at it but statistics say that the ones who can judge it are so few that there is no point in trying.
If I hear dumb questions in an interview, it's a red flag about that person's ability to be self-aware.
Imagine addressing this question to a senior lawyer that you need to sort out some complicated situation. I guess, the lawyer would be first stunned for a second and then insulted that he's being treated like a kid.