Behavioral Interviews: Framework and Strategy

This post is the final framework and strategy for technical interviews. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out my similar posts on System Design Interviews and Coding Interviews too.

1. The Framework

Use the Situation, Task, Action, Result framework. Also known as STAR.

1. Situation: The interviewer wants you to present a recent challenging situation in which you found yourself.
2. Task: What were you required to achieve? The interviewer will be looking to see what you were trying to achieve from the situation.
3. Action: What did you do? The interviewer will be looking for information on what you did, why you did it and what the alternatives were.
4. Result: What was the outcome of your actions? What did you achieve through your actions? Did you meet your goal? What did you learn? Have you used that learning since?

2. Tips

1. Come up with a pre-existing set of situations, tasks, actions, and results that are the most impactful and rehearse these before the interview.
2. When providing answers, talk about impact/depth/scope/complexity/ambiguity/influence. These dimensions show the overall depth and exposure to situations for higher level roles.

3. Example questions

• Tell me about a time when you had no idea about the solution to a problem and you had to go and learn a bunch of new information to figure it out.
• What is the coolest thing you’ve ever learned that made you better at your job?

4. Inspiration

Read the mission statement of the company you’re interviewing for and make up questions that are relevant to their principles. For example, you can use Amazon’s leadership principles and make up questions that are relevant to each leadership principle. Every company will ask similar questions so this is a good starting point.

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