The Software Engineer Behavioral Interview
*Groans*
One thing you may find as you search for a software engineer job is that interviews come in all shapes and sizes. Maybe you will have seven interviews split across a month, with the last four taking place in succession, or maybe you will have two interviews and walk away with an offer.
Generally speaking, I find that your typical company will do something like this:
- You get an initial call with HR — call that “initial HR screening”
- You have a technical interview with a software engineer peer or a software engineer manager
- You have a final round, but it is four separate interviews. If you have experience, one of these is a system design interview. Another interview is behavioral
When I hear the term “behavioral interview,” I typically think of a “dedicated” behavioral interview as opposed to what you get in the initial HR screening. The initial HR screening almost always has behavioral interview questions sprinkled in (“tell me about yourself. Why do you want to work here?”), and you may be surprised to hear behavioral interview questions from a software engineer manager, but these kinds of interviews are different in two ways. In an initial HR screening, the questions tend to not be open-ended (I don’t have a source — that is my personal experience). They might ask about your experience with certain tools, as well as what your interests are, but they tend to not focus heavily on elaborate questions to answer with the STAR method. They also are usually 30 minutes, and a fair amount of that time is spent pitching a company to you.
In a technical interview, the questions tend to focus more on domain knowledge. I would characterize an interview like this as a “hybrid” behavioral/technical interview, but I suppose that is just splitting hairs. They may start by asking you a behavioral interview question like “What is the biggest challenge you ever faced?”, but they will follow up with technical questions. Careless error after building and deploying…did you or your team consider the benefits of using Docker? A component in Vue that worked across multiple windows…how did you use Vue to communicate between parent component and child component? A problem with gRPC…What are the benefits of using gRPC? Generic questions will guide the direction of the interview, and the more you talk, the more the interviewer will hone in on how much you know and understand a technical subject.
In a sense, no interview in this industry is ever 100% technical or 100% behavioral. Every story you share will have a technical aspect to it, and even the most difficult coding interview will generally begin by asking you to talk about yourself. The rest of this post, then, will be about interviews that are primarily behavioral.
The Purpose
A very generic answer to why companies have behavioral interviews is that they want to look for a team fit: They want to see if you demonstrate qualities like cooperation, leadership, and good communication. A slightly more cynical answer is that they are looking for a charisma and personality fit, as in someone “cool enough” to work with.
One thing you will notice if you watch the full video above: Clement describes himself as a story-teller a lot. That’s another way to think of this. When you get a question, you answer with a story.
Another case of do-what-I-say-not-what-I-do: Answer with a good story, and don’t try to pivot multiple times with something like — “Yeah, a good example of conflict resolution is a time Phil Bolton insisted on removing all semicolons, and I disagreed with him, so I broke my manager’s computer and made it look like Phil did it…wait, that’s a terrible story. Let me try that again.”
Thinking Outside Software Engineering
You can find example questions here, but of the ten questions listed by Indeed.com for software engineer behavioral interviews, I have never heard a single one of those in a real interview. I had more luck here by just reviewing generic behavioral interview questions for ALL job candidates.
This is a segue to my next point: It could be helpful, for this interview only, to focus less on software engineering and more on general things that make a person good at charisma and/or story-telling.
I’ve linked this video before, and I love/hate it. If you read any of the comments, you will realize that this person very openly is not a software engineer or software engineer manager. This is why he provides such generic answers to some questions, like:
I’m an experienced software engineer who constantly seeks out innovative solutions to everyday problems. In my seven years in this industry, I’ve honed my analytical thinking and collaboration skills, and I love working with a team. I’ve also had the opportunity to serve as the software engineer lead for three projects.
He goes on with:
Before my current position, I was a junior software engineer with Mobile First. While working there, I committed to mobile system development, which has been my specialty for seven years. I understand that a major part of this role with your firm focuses on leading mobile development teams, which my previous experience has certainly prepared me for.
This interview coach’s answers are, in my opinion, too generic to be helpful. One positive comment from an actual software engineer stated that he liked the video, but to never, EVER use his response to “What is your biggest weakness?” The interview coach, in the video above, said his response is that he works too hard. To the dismay of his partner, he is ALWAYS coding.
The good:
- There’s a lot to be said about confidence
- This interview coach demonstrates a positive attitude
- I like some of the phrases he uses a lot. “Industry leader” is generic, but researching a company is always a good idea. I also kind of like his answer to the question of salary, something like: “People with my level of experience, in this region, generally make an average of between 90–110K a year. The value I provide is on the high end of this spectrum, but I understand that you do not know me yet. This is why you can start me at 102K, and I am sure you will receive a positive return on your investment.”
The “Keep On Coding” video is way better.
- He recommends 8–10 canned responses per generic question
- He includes his elevator pitch, which is much better than the interview coach’s. Instead of just using generic phrases about being “technically astute,” he names actual technologies because he is actually a software engineer
- He has a pretty good, specific story about persuading a company to standardize on Vue.js
Caveats
If you ask me about coding interviews I have taken in the past, I can talk to the algorithms involved, the correct solution, and how I did. I can also provide a play-by-play of what worked and what didn’t.
With behavioral interviews, I really don’t know. Video and in-person interviews are nice because you can at least look for body language and facial expression, but sometimes professionals are good at hiding their thoughts. Someone who seems very happy with an answer may actually be writing negative feedback in their notes, for example.
How To Win Friends and Influence People has been criticized a lot, but I do like the tip about being interesting by being interested. If you get a general idea who an interviewer is and what he/she has worked with, you can gain valuable insight about how to succeed, how a company is run, and just generally why certain technologies are popular and what their fans have to say about them from real-world experience. At the very least, these kinds of questions can help you stall as you figure out the solutions to whatever sample problems they throw at you.
Your mileage may vary, and an even less helpful cliche is that to ace a behavioral interview, you should be spending your time making your stories. Need a story about a time you built a multi-million dollar company in your garage? Do it.
Or write a blog post about it, I don’t know.
Closing Thoughts
Here is a man who thinks OUTSIDE the box in his interviews.
(Click here to check out CORGIS — Collection Of Really Good Interview Stuff)
