All You Need To Know About Behavioral Interviews (for software engineers)
Summary
TLDRThis video offers an in-depth guide to behavioral interviews in software engineering, explaining what they are and the types of questions to expect. It emphasizes their importance, even compared to technical interviews, and provides tips for success. The video also announces a new resource on Algo Expert, featuring sample behavioral interview questions and answers to help candidates prepare effectively.
Takeaways
- 😀 Behavioral interviews are a crucial part of the software engineering interview process, assessing non-technical skills and traits.
- 🔍 These interviews vary by company, with names like 'googliness' at Google and a focus on leadership principles at Amazon.
- 🎯 Behavioral questions aim to reveal how candidates have handled past situations, reflecting on their problem-solving and teamwork abilities.
- 💡 The video introduces a new resource on Algo Expert, offering sample behavioral interview questions and answers.
- 🗣️ Interviewers look for detailed responses that provide insight into a candidate's experiences and the lessons learned from them.
- 🤔 There are no right or wrong answers; the focus is on how candidates' stories demonstrate valuable qualities and skills.
- 👥 It's important to balance showcasing individual achievements with examples of teamwork and collaboration.
- 📚 Preparation is key, which includes selecting and practicing responses to potential behavioral interview questions.
- ⏱️ Candidates should not hesitate to take a moment to collect their thoughts before answering, ensuring a thoughtful and impactful response.
- 📈 The video emphasizes the importance of behavioral interviews, suggesting that they are not to be underestimated in the hiring process.
Q & A
What are behavioral interviews in the context of software engineering?
-Behavioral interviews in software engineering are non-technical interviews that assess personal qualities and traits such as humility, initiative, stress management, teamwork, and leadership. They are conducted to evaluate a candidate's soft skills and how they align with the company's values and culture.
Why are behavioral interviews important in the software engineering hiring process?
-Behavioral interviews are crucial as they help companies assess candidates' soft skills and cultural fit, which are essential for teamwork and collaboration in a work environment. They ensure that candidates possess not only technical skills but also the interpersonal abilities needed to succeed in the role.
How do companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook conduct behavioral interviews?
-Companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook conduct behavioral interviews in various ways. Google calls it a 'Googliness and Leadership' interview, Amazon focuses on its leadership principles, and Facebook simply refers to it as a non-technical interview. The format can vary, including full behavioral interviews or hybrid interviews that combine technical and behavioral elements.
What types of questions can one expect in a behavioral interview for software engineering?
-Behavioral interview questions often focus on past experiences and how candidates handled specific situations. Examples include questions about handling team conflicts, giving and receiving feedback, managing challenging projects, and onboarding new team members.
What is the significance of the term 'googliness' in Google's behavioral interviews?
-The term 'googliness' at Google refers to the company's unique set of values and characteristics that they look for in their employees. It encompasses qualities like being a good team player, showing humility, and demonstrating leadership, which are considered essential for the company's culture.
How can candidates prepare for behavioral interviews in software engineering?
-Candidates can prepare for behavioral interviews by reflecting on their past experiences, identifying situations that demonstrate key qualities, and practicing how to articulate these experiences clearly. Utilizing resources like Algo Expert's behavioral interview content can also provide sample questions and answers to help with preparation.
Why is it beneficial to be detailed in your answers during a behavioral interview?
-Being detailed in answers allows interviewers to gain a clear understanding of a candidate's past experiences and how they handled various situations. This detail provides the necessary context for interviewers to assess whether the candidate possesses the desired traits and skills.
What is the role of practice in preparing for behavioral interviews?
-Practice is essential for behavioral interviews as it helps candidates select and refine the most relevant and impactful stories from their past experiences. It also helps in structuring responses to effectively convey personal qualities and skills to the interviewer.
How should candidates approach questions in behavioral interviews if they don't have an immediate answer?
-If a candidate doesn't have an immediate answer to a behavioral interview question, it's acceptable to request a brief moment to collect their thoughts. This ensures that they can provide a well-considered response that accurately reflects their experiences and skills.
What is the importance of balancing individualistic qualities and teamwork in behavioral interview answers?
-Balancing individualistic qualities and teamwork in answers is important because it shows interviewers that the candidate can excel both independently and as part of a team. This balance demonstrates versatility and adaptability, which are valuable in a work environment.
Outlines
💼 Introduction to Behavioral Interviews in Software Engineering
The speaker introduces the concept of behavioral interviews in the context of software engineering, explaining that they are non-technical assessments of a candidate's traits and soft skills. He discusses how big tech companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook structure their behavioral interviews differently, though the interviews ultimately aim to assess similar qualities. These traits include leadership, humility, teamwork, and the ability to handle stress. He emphasizes the importance of taking behavioral interviews seriously, citing Google’s formal training program for interviewers.
🤔 The Lack of Preparatory Resources for Behavioral Interviews
The speaker contrasts behavioral interviews with coding and systems design interviews, highlighting the limited availability of preparatory platforms for behavioral interviews. He humorously breaks character to introduce a new feature on AlgoExpert that offers behavioral interview questions with detailed answers. He mentions the new content is free with any AlgoExpert purchase and emphasizes its value, as it provides much-needed practice for these interviews.
📝 Sample Behavioral Interview Questions
Here, the speaker provides examples of common behavioral interview questions, such as resolving team conflicts, handling feedback, and navigating challenging projects. He explains how these questions explore past experiences in depth, offering insights into a candidate’s traits and problem-solving abilities. The speaker encourages detailed answers, as they provide clear evidence of how the candidate handled situations and learned from them, stressing that vague answers will not suffice.
📚 Tips for Behavioral Interviews
The speaker gives several key tips for excelling in behavioral interviews. First, he advises giving detailed answers to convey the necessary context for the interviewer to assess specific traits. Second, he suggests choosing past experiences wisely to ensure they reflect positively on the candidate. Third, he highlights the importance of balancing individual and team-related qualities in responses. Finally, the speaker encourages preparation and practicing answers to behavioral questions, even if it means taking a moment to think during the interview.
🎥 Final Thoughts and Call to Action
In the conclusion, the speaker reiterates the importance of thorough preparation for behavioral interviews, recommending AlgoExpert for high-quality content and practice. He invites viewers to like the video, subscribe to his channel, and follow him on social media for more content. He ends with a casual note, encouraging further engagement in future videos.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Behavioral Interviews
💡Big Tech Companies
💡Non-technical Interview
💡Leadership Principles
💡Hybrid Interview
💡Soft Skills
💡Past Experiences
💡Sample Questions
💡Algo Expert
💡Promo Code
💡Interview Preparation
Highlights
Introduction to behavioral interviews in software engineering, covering what they are, typical questions, and tips for success.
Explanation of the different types of interviews used by big tech companies: coding, systems design, and behavioral interviews.
Behavioral interviews are non-technical and assess soft skills, leadership, and qualities like humility, respect, and teamwork.
Different companies have variations of behavioral interviews; for example, Google's 'Googliness and Leadership' interview and Amazon's focus on leadership principles.
Behavioral interviews can vary in structure, from full 45-minute sessions to hybrid interviews combining behavioral and technical questions.
Key traits assessed include humility, initiative, handling stress, teamwork, leadership, conflict resolution, and receiving/giving feedback.
Behavioral interviews are important and should not be underestimated, especially at major tech companies where they're taken very seriously.
Sample behavioral questions include: handling team conflicts, challenging projects, giving and receiving feedback, and onboarding new team members.
Detailed answers are crucial to provide the interviewer with a clear picture of your experiences, skills, and how you handled specific situations.
There are no right or wrong answers in behavioral interviews, but you must pick past experiences that highlight valuable traits.
It's important to balance individual accomplishments with how well you work in a team, emphasizing both personal strengths and teamwork.
Preparation is essential—selecting the right past experiences ahead of time ensures you can share meaningful and relevant stories during the interview.
Taking time to think before answering is acceptable in behavioral interviews—it's better to give a thoughtful, detailed response than a quick but poor one.
Algo Expert offers resources, including behavioral interview questions with full sample answers, to help prepare candidates for these interviews.
Final tip: Practice answering behavioral questions to ensure you can clearly and effectively communicate your strengths during the interview.
Transcripts
what's up everybody how's it going in
this video i'm going to tell you
everything that you need to know
about behavioral interviews in software
engineering
what behavioral interviews are what
types of questions you can expect to get
in a behavioral interview
and i'm even going to give you a few
general tips on how you
can do very well in your behavioral
interviews
so with that let's jump right into it if
you're familiar with big tech
companies and startups especially the
fang companies like amazon facebook
you know that they assess their software
engineering candidates
using a few different types of
interviews there's obviously coding
interviews
systems design interviews and third but
not least
you guessed it behavioral interviews
behavioral interviews
unlike coding and systems design
interviews are non-technical interviews
they are non-technical now the
interesting thing about behavioral
interviews is that depending on the
company
that you're interviewing at and
depending on other circumstances
they might look a little bit different
they might be labeled differently
they might be proctored or given
differently
for example if you're interviewing for a
software engineering position at google
your behavioral interview is going to be
called a googliness
and leadership interview where
googliness is basically an umbrella term
for
the perfect human being if you're
interviewing at amazon
not really by the way but kind of if
you're interviewing at amazon
then the behavioral interview is really
going to focus on amazon's
leadership principles which are publicly
available if you're interviewing at
the behavioral interview as far as i
remember is just called a non-technical
interview now on top of that
the behavioral interview itself might
look a little different
depending on the company or depending on
who you are
for example you might have a full
45-minute interview
that is a behavioral interview
alternatively you might have a
hybrid interview that's actually what i
had when i interviewed at facebook it
was my last interview of the day
and it was half behavioral interview and
half coding interview
about 25 or 30 minutes behavioral and 20
to 15 minutes
coding so the point is these behavioral
interviews come in
all sorts of shapes and sizes and
flavors and colors
but at the end of the day regardless of
what they're called or what they claim
to assess
they all do end up assessing basically
the same thing and we'll get into what
they assess
in just a minute and on top of that
across the board
they are very important this is not an
interview that you can just disregard
or treat as like a guaranteed thing that
you know you're gonna pass
or something that you might not even get
no this is a very important
interview and if i remember correctly as
of 2018 when i was still at google
the googliness and leadership behavioral
interview for example
became a mandatory thing at google that
was taken very seriously people had to
get trained i had to get trained to get
those interviews
and is this something very important not
to underestimate
at this point you're probably wondering
okay what do they assess these
behavioral interviews
and the answer is they assess a few
qualities and traits that you can have
as a
person that are generally viewed as very
positive
both in a human being generally speaking
but also
especially in an employee and in a
software engineer
so things like humility whether you're a
respectful person
whether you're able to take initiative
whether you're able to
handle ambiguity and stress
whether you're able to manage work
properly
whether you're able to be a good team
player
to be a leader and they also assess some
more
like nuanced software engineering skills
things that you might find yourself
needing as a software engineer on the
job that are non-technical
so for example you know the ability to
give and receive
feedback in a good way or the ability to
resolve conflict if there is conflict on
a team
all of these kind of soft skills and
nuanced
skills are the things that they assess
now at this point you're probably
wondering
how do they assess this how are these
behavioral interviews
actually conducted and the answer to
that is very simple
these behavioral interviews are
basically a long conversation
between you and the interviewer where
the interviewer
asks you a lot of questions a lot of
behavioral interview questions and these
questions
are about your past about your
experience and they're trying to gain
visibility into your past and your
experiences
in order to see if you possess some of
these traits and qualities and nuanced
skills that we just mentioned before now
this is where behavioral interviews
kind of suck compared to coding
interviews and systems design interviews
because for those other types of
interviews there are
a lot of platforms and preparatory
resources out there
that give you the types of questions
that you might expect or that you might
be able to get
on those interviews for example just my
company i'll go expert
we help prepare you for coding
interviews and systems design interviews
by giving you sample questions and
answers that you might get in a coding
interview or a systems design interview
for behavioral interviews
there are no such platforms there are no
platforms that give you
actual behavioral interview questions
with legitimate
sample answers that's one of the
critical things that's always
missing and oh sorry one second
i'm getting a phone call i have to take
this hello
oh oh you want me to tell the viewers
what the
algo expert just launched today a brand
new
behavioral interview content section
that's got 15 videos 12 of which are
exactly that sample behavioral interview
questions
with actual answers like full-blown
answers oh yeah
oh and they're filmed by me oh right
yeah yeah i filmed those
okay and this behavioral interview
content is free for anyone who buys
either algo expert systems expert or
both
okay great yeah i'll tell the viewers
okay all right so
that's right we just launched a brand
new behavioral interview section on algo
expert
you heard all the details from that
sketch phone call that wasn't really a
phone call
but okay if this little skit that i just
did there
even remotely made you like internally
chuckled like
inside your brain your mind you were
like
that was that was like kind of funny
that made you know
a conceptual internal smile
then you owe me a smashing of the like
button it doesn't even have to be a
smash thing
it can be a tap of the like button but
you owe it to me oh and of course if you
decide to purchase algo expert or
systems expert don't forget to use the
promo code clem clem for a discount on
the platform okay where was i the point
is yes we have a bunch of
sample behavioral interview questions
and answers on algo expert
i'll share a few sample questions with
you right now
the types of questions that you can
expect to get in the behavioral
interview
are things like tell me about a time
when you had a
conflict on your team how did you handle
this conflict
what did you learn from it or what do
you think
about receiving and giving feedback tell
me about a time when you received
or gave tough feedback how did you
handle
receiving the feedback or giving it or
maybe something like
tell me about a time when you had a very
challenging project
why was it challenging how did you
handle the challenge
what did you learn from it and was there
any failure in the project
i'll give you one last example you might
be asked a question like
imagine that you're in the middle of a
huge project at work
and suddenly a new engineer joins your
team
you are tasked with onboarding them how
do you handle the situation
what do you do with the onboarding
process so as you can see
these questions come in the various
shapes and colors again like before
they are very different from one another
they cover a lot of different
types of past experiences and you have
to be able to talk about them
in a fair amount of detail so this
brings me to the last part of this video
i want to give you
a few tips on how you can do very well
in your behavioral interviews
the first tip that i can give you this
is perhaps the most important one
it's to be detailed in your answers
because you see like we said before
behavioral interviewers
are looking to get visibility into your
past experiences
to see if you have some of these skills
and traits that we mentioned
they are trying to get signal that you
possess
certain qualities and traits and all
that the only way that they can get the
signal
is if they get a clear idea a clear
picture of what you've done in the past
and how you've handled certain
situations
what you've learned from them and so on
and so forth in order for them to get
that clear picture to get that context
they need a good amount of detail so
it's important that you
not rush through answers or that you not
give
super vague answers we are not looking
for something like
tell me about the most challenging
project that you've worked on and you
just say
oh my most challenging project was a web
app that i built
no that doesn't tell me anything i need
detail
doesn't matter what the web app is
doesn't matter if it's something
super complicated or not that
complicated so long as you actually give
me detail
and you actually paint a story that
gives me signal
about those things now this brings me to
my second
tip here the second tip is that while
there are no
right or wrong answers in a behavioral
interview
in other words you know going off of the
example that i just gave if someone asks
you what the most challenging project is
it doesn't really
matter what you tell them like even if
it's something that's not
that impressive of a project or if it's
something that's super impressive
super complex doesn't really matter so
long as the story
that you're painting the story that
you're describing
actually conveys or shows
that you possess certain valuable traits
or
qualities or that you have certain
skills that's what matters
and so it's important that you you pick
certain past experiences to answer
behavioral interview questions with
wisely you want to pick past experiences
and stories that will actually be
meaningful
to be shared with an interviewer and
this is going to tie into one of the
other tips that i'm going to give you in
a second
first i want to give you a third other
tip which is that
when you're trying to convey that you
have certain
qualities and traits and so on and so
forth you want to make sure that you
strike a balance between
very like individualistic qualities
which are very important like you want
to show to your interviewer
that you are smart that you are capable
that you are able to
take initiative you want to talk about
yourself a lot because at the end of the
day this is an interview about
you as a singular individual
candidate at the same time you want to
strike a good balance with
talking about how you work as part of a
team how you can
work with others how you can give others
feedback help others how others can help
you
those are two very important kind of
distinct
things that you want to focus on so
ideally some of your answers to
behavioral interview questions
focus more on you and how good of an
individual you are
and others focus more on how
well you work in a team how you can
support others
that kind of stuff now this brings me to
the tip that i
kind of hinted at before at the end of
the day it's
very important to prepare for behavioral
interviews
in some sense you don't need to prepare
for behavioral interviews because
you've lived through past experiences
you have
your stories already in your past you
don't have to
study up on some sort of new knowledge
but at the same time you do have to
prepare because
you want to have picked the nicest or
the
the most appropriate stories to that
highlight
the best qualities in you ahead of time
you don't want to find yourself
in a behavioral interview talking about
an experience
that actually doesn't bring much value
to the conversation
or that doesn't paint you in a good
light maybe you're going to talk about a
story that's actually
kind of a bad you know image of you just
because
it's just a bad story and you don't want
to find yourself in that situation so
it's important to practice
and how do you practice with sample
questions and looking at sample answers
aka on algoexpert and here i'll give you
one last tip which i actually
don't mention in any of the algo expert
videos so
the youtube fam gets a bonus to appear
and this tip is that if you're in an
interview and
a behavioral interview and someone asks
you a question
don't be afraid to take a little bit of
time to collect your thoughts
and think about how you're going to
answer it in other words if you don't
have a
pre-planned answer then tell the
interviewer
hey give me like 20 seconds to just
think about this you know let me think
about
what the most challenging project i've
ever worked on was or let me think about
you know how i would handle distributing
work amongst engineers
don't be afraid to take a bit of time to
collect your thoughts
at the end of the day it is better that
you give a
good story that actually highlights your
strengths and qualities
even if it takes you a bit of time to
get to that story
rather than you give a quick but poor
story
that doesn't really highlight anything
so that's all i've got for you in this
video
hopefully you have a much better idea of
what behavioral interviews
are for software engineers like i've
said multiple times in the video
if you do want to prepare for your
behavioral interviews very seriously
and do consider checking out i'll go
expert or systems expert
one of the two will give you the bonus
behavioral interview content
for free and we have really quality
content there
if you found this video informative
don't forget to smash the like button
subscribe to the channel if you haven't
already if you enjoy short form written
content check me out on linkedin or
twitter and if you enjoy pictures
instagram and otherwise i will see you
in the next video
تصفح المزيد من مقاطع الفيديو ذات الصلة
Navigating the quant trading new grad / intern hiring process
40 IT Tech Support Interview Question And Answers, Sys Admin + Light Networking
Getting A Job With Apple Retail - Full Interview Prep Guide
What are your Hobbies Interview Question | How to Answer Hobby Questions in Interview
If I Wanted a Software Engineering Internship in 2025, I’d Do This
Crack Your Java Interview With Most-Asked Questions | Java Fundamentals
5.0 / 5 (0 votes)