How to answer the HARDEST behavioral interview questions

👩‍🎓 Coaching 🧑‍🎓

Impress interviewers with answers to hard interview questions like “tell me about a time you failed” or “tell me about a weakness” or “tell me about a time you had a conflict” or “tell me about a time you had to make a hard decision” and so on. We break down interview tips on how to think of stories, how to structure and what to highlight in your answers.

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[PrabhathJayawardena]

Thanks Diana! This is super helpful and please make a few more on behavioral interviews tips, and what the interviewers are looking for, with some examples :)

[pranavaswarup]

Thank you Dianna for these amazing videos. I am preparing for my final loop at FAANG this week and this is proving incredibly helpful. Can you also provide some tips on how to pick stories to talk about, whether we should demonstrate all signal in all stories, what your thoughts on repeating stories across interviews, etc. Also we would love to see more of your examples in new videos. Please continue the fantastic job you are doing in helping the community better prepare for their jobs!!

[mohamedshommo]

You are the best and I enjoy your videos. Please provide another follow up video with more examples. Also please add a video for technical interviews because many companies bring engineering manages to see how a candidate works with engineering with emphasis on how to work with engineers rather than on the technical questions.

[diannayau]

This video was inspired by comments from you guys! Keep the comments coming on interview questions you guys are struggling with. 😃

[friendsplain]

@diannayau This is incredibly helpful Dianna! I am currently interviewing for a Senior level tech role with one of the the biggest Tech companies in Silicon Valley.

Quick question. Let's say the interview question is "Name a time you failed". Would you as a the interviewer perceive a candidate negatively if he/she answers a "failure" question with a "conflict" question?

For example, if an interviewee answers "name a time you failed" question with a story on how there was a conflict and the interviewee saved the day?

On one hand, I see how a correctly positioned "conflict" story can be an impressive example for how the candidate avoided failure. But I wonder from an interviewer's perspective this redirection can be perceived as the candidate did not adequately answer the question of failure and is just referencing a pre-practiced problem.

Does this make sense?

[macunknown]

What would be a good answer to - what is your weakness ?? from a web-dev POV.

[aaronmalone]

Thank You! Awesome and great know how.

[arunramalingam]

Hi Dianna, I am curious if the answer on failure wouldn’t be construed as a red flag due a fundamental lack of testing your hypothesis before spending 6 months with a engineering and design team on the feature. Wouldn’t that be risky?

[ross]

Thanks for another great video! Do you have any tips for interviewees coming from entrepreneurship background? My most prominent projects involved hiring developers myself and giving them specifications of what to build, so it's hard to speak about "motivating" them, as their main motivation was the salary I paid them :)

I have good stories that demonstrate traits like ownership, customer obsession, conflicts with business parties, and hard decisions, but due to my background I don't have substantial stories about "teams", such as "influencing without authority".

I did had two smaller projects that involved a team, but those project were shorter and did not succeed, so I didn't even mention them in my resume. I can speak about them as failures that I learned from, but as a team we didn't continue working together (as it was a joint venture with a single objective), so I can't say it later led for "better" team work. For the same reasons, it's hard for me to find any good example of getting a "negative" feedback and demonstrate what I did in order to become "better" next time, as there wasn't a next time.
I'm not sure how I will be looked upon in these circumstances compared to candidates who have more substantial "team" stories since they worked in a more "traditional" setting like a company.

[isaacjeanteube]

Thnak you Dianna for the video. Quick question, I will be having 5 interviews the next weeks: Execution, Leadership, Product Strategy, Cross-Functional Collaboration, and Technical Acumen. I'm wondering where can I expect behavioral questions? Thank you very much.

[aliishaq]

Awesome video Dianna. How long should one typically spend on a response? Should it be a 1 minute response to allow for follow-ups? Or should we aim for something closer to 3-5 minutes to give substantial answers?

[ganeshdube]

I wish if you can give more examples for the behavioral would really appreciate it :) Dianna

[scoutee]

I think you are funny and have a good sense of humor. why not show it even more? this would make the content more light.