A while back we discussed coding and system design interviews. If you haven’t, feel free to take a look here:
Today, let’s review and discuss the last category in this series — behavior interviews. I am a software engineer by training. Behavior questions are common across the industry. However, this post is heavily focused on the engineering point of view.
Why Is It Important
Coding interviews evaluate whether or not you can be an effective and productive engineer. System design evaluates whether or not you can work in a large-scale complex system. Behavior interviews evaluate whether or not you can work through critical situations, whether or not you can work well with your coworker, whether or not you can uplift the team, whether or not you can be or have the potential to be a leader, and many more.
If you do well in coding interviews, then you are qualified as a junior engineer. If you do well in system design, you may land an offer with a senior engineer title. Those two are the necessary foundations. But only if you exile on behavior questions, will you have a chance to be considered for a team lead or a management role.
Don’t Neglect Behavior Interview Preparation
The first mistake for candidates is that many often neglect behavior interviews. You may think:
I don’t really want to prepare for behavior interviews. It is what it is. I am who I am. I don’t want to over-prepare it or fake it. I want to be my true self during the behavior interviews.
You could spend weeks and months practicing coding questions, and grokking system design concepts, but only start looking at a few behavior questions the weekend before the interviews.
That is not enough. It takes the same amount of effort, if not more to prepare for behavior interviews.
Preparation Is A Continuous Process
In scrum or sprint project management, we have retrospectives once in a while to reflect on what went well and what didn’t. That’s for the team level, but it is also as valuable to do the same on the personal level.
In most established companies, there is some employee evaluation. To the company, that’s a time to promote the high performer and manage out the low performer. To individuals, it is also a great time to reflect and to seek opportunities to do better in the next period.
Master Zeng said:
I self-introspect multiple times every day. Whether, when making suggestions to others, I may have been not faithful; Whether, in intercourse with friends, I may have been not sincere; whether, I may have not mastered and practiced what I have been taught.
That was B.C. 500, but it is still applicable today. Behavior interview preparation is a continuous process and it is also a self-introspection process.
What to Focus On
Each company can have its own definition of engineering culture. At Netflix, there is a notion of a “dream team” and a list of valued behaviors. At Google, there is the so-called Googleyness. Most famous among all, there are the 16 leadership principles at Amazon.
Looking through the mist, they are more or less the same. Meta might have emphasized a little more “move fast”, and Google might have focused a bit more on “engineering complexity”, but fundamentally, what makes an engineer an excellent engineer won’t change from place to place.
Here is a list of 14 characteristics that I summarized in plain words:
1) Be Passionate
- As Steve Jobs said: “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.”
- Be Intrinsically motivated about your work
- Be energetic
2) Make Good Judgment
- Have good instincts
- Seek diverse perspectives from others
- Make decisions based on data
3) Be Creative
- Think out-of-the-box, develop impactful ideas
- Look for every opportunity to reduce the complexity of the problems
4) Think Big
- Focus on the big picture
- Know what matters and what not
- Choose long-term value over short-term results
- Communicate ideas effectively to others
5) Be Curios and Continue Learning
- Getting older doesn’t mean that you are more experienced since technologies are constantly evolving
- Stay hungry and keep learning
- Learn from failures and learn from people around you
6) Mentor and Grow Teammate
- Be a helpful team-player
- Help your colleagues grow and succeed
- Point your teammates to the vision that you see and inspire them to join the journey with you
7) Take Ownership
- Be proactive and no hand-holding
- Have a sense of responsibility for our collective success
- Act in the best interest of the company, the team, then yourself
8) Have Commitments
- Once a decision has been made, commit to it regardless of whether it is your ideas or others
- Build great products and systems
- Seek every opportunity to make improvement
- Has integrity
9) Be Respectful & Thoughtful
- Have empathy
- Respect people with different backgrounds, identities, values, and cultures
10) Move Fast
- Make tough decisions without a long delay
- Know when to take informed, calculated risks
- Build and iterate on ideas
- Be open to possible failures
11) Be Open & Sincere
- Provide candid and direct feedback
- Be willing to have hard conversations with each other
- Speak up with courage when disagreeing
- Debate ideas with good intentions and struct your colleges to do the same
12) Understand the Constraints
- Understand that time, budget, computing resources, headcounts are all constrained resources
- Aim to achieve more with less
13) Resolve Conflicts
- Bring the team together and move things forward
- Recognize that everybody has bias and act against that
- Understand the perspective of your colleagues, customers, and partners
14) Perseverance
- Stay calm in stressful situations
- Steer through instabilities and overcome obstacles
- Be optimistic & spread the positive energy to your teammates
The list comes in no particular order. they are equally important.
There is plenty of example questions on the internet. They are all about these characteristics above.
Not aiming for a comprehensive list, here are a few examples:
- Tell me a project that you are most proud of?
- Tell me about a time when you failed to meet a deadline?
- Tell me about a disagreement you had with your team?
Fake It Until You Make It
Can you fake it until you make it?
Nothing prevents you from doing that. But there are a few problems.
A lot of interview questions start with “tell me about a time when …”. Behavior interview is about real-life work experience, not story-telling, not role play.
Even if you can pass the gate by faking, you might not be able to live up to the expectation. You might suffer from imposter syndrome. You may experience more stress than usual. You may not be able to survive and can risk being eventually let go.
What’s Next
System design and coding have little to nothing to do with your day-to-day work and they can be studies. Behavior is different — it is all about your day-to-day work.
Amazon added two new leadership principles recently. One of them is:
Strive to be Earth’s Best EmployerLeaders work every day to create a safer, more productive, higher performing, more diverse, and more just work environment. They lead with empathy, have fun at work, and make it easy for others to have fun. Leaders ask themselves: Are my fellow employees growing? Are they empowered? Are they ready for what’s next? Leaders have a vision for and commitment to their employees’ personal success, whether that be at Amazon or elsewhere.
I think we should all strive to be the earth’s best employees. Be kind to one another, focus on the priority, aim high, work hard, have fun, and make an impact! That’s the best thing we can do.
