Behavioral interviews aren’t about personality. They’re about evidence.
You’re being evaluated on how you handled real situations in the past — because that’s the best predictor of how you’ll perform in the future.
1. Perfect Your Elevator Pitch
The first question is almost always:
“Tell me about yourself.”
Walk through your experience at a high level. Keep it tight. No rambling. No irrelevant history.
- Who you are + your current role
- What team you work on and something you’ve built
- Briefly bring up the past companies you’ve worked at if they’re impressive and/or relevant
- Express that you’re happy to be interviewing
Example
Hey, my name is James. I’m currently a Software Engineer at Nova Credit, a Series C fintech, where I’ve worked for the last three years. I built our Public API, which expanded our offerings to international markets like Singapore, Canada, India, and the UK. I also helped launch our cash flow underwriting products, diversifying the business beyond traditional credit. I’m a full-stack engineer with a strong product focus, and I spend time deepening my understanding of distributed systems and infrastructure.
Why this works:
- Clear progression
- Specific impact
- Defined technical identity
Your elevator pitch sets the tone. Make it sharp.
2. Prepare for the Most Common Behavioral Questions
You don’t need 20 stories.
You need 6–8 strong ones that you can remix.
Typical questions include:
- What project are you most proud of?
- Tell me about a time you faced a tight deadline.
- Describe a conflict at work and how you handled it.
- Tell me about a time you took on significant scope.
- Describe a time you dealt with a difficult stakeholder.
- Tell me about a time you made a trade-off between speed and quality.
- Tell me about a failure and what you learned.
If your stories are strong, you can adapt them to answer most of these.
3. Align With Company Values (When It Matters)
Some companies heavily evaluate against values (Amazon is the classic example).
If that’s the case:
- Look up their values.
- Determine which values matter the most.
- Prepare stories that clearly demonstrate those traits.
For example, at Amazon you might prepare:
- A Customer Obsession story
- A Bias for Action story
- A Dive Deep story
4. Differentiate Yourself With Scope
Most candidates have “decent” stories.
Very few communicate scope and scale.
Interviewers subconsciously ask:
What level did this operate at?
There’s a difference between impacting your team < impacting your org < impacting the company.
There’s a difference between 1 user, 10,000 users, and 1 million users.
Usually, in the S of STAR, you should describe the scope:
- How big was the problem?
- How many people did this affect?
- How complex was the system?
- How much ownership did you carry?
If your story lacks scope, you blend in.