Reference

https://www.techinterviewhandbook.org/behavioral-interview-questions/

https://github.com/yangshun/tech-interview-handbook

STAR Answer Format (as described by Amazon)

The STAR method is a structured manner of responding to a behavioral-based interview question by discussing the specific situation, task, action, and result of what you’re describing. Here’s what it looks like:

Situation

Describe the situation that you were in, or the task that you needed to accomplish. Give enough detail for the interviewer to understand the complexities of the situation. This example can be from a previous job, school project, volunteer activity, or any relevant event.

Task

What goal were you working toward?

Action

Describe the actions you took to address the situation with an appropriate amount of detail, and keep the focus on you. What specific steps did you take? What was your particular contribution? Be careful that you don’t describe what the team or group did when talking about a project. Let us know what you actually did. Use the word “I,” not “we,” when describing actions.

Result

Describe the outcome of your actions and don’t be shy about taking credit for your behavior. What happened? How did the event end? What did you accomplish? What did you learn? Provide examples using metrics or data if applicable.

Consider your own successes and failures in relation to the Leadership Principles. Have specific examples that showcase your expertise, and demonstrate how you’ve taken risks, succeeded, failed and grown in the process. Keep in mind, some of Amazon’s most successful programs have risen from the ashes of failed projects. Failure is a necessary part of innovation. It’s not optional. We understand that and believe in failing early and iterating until we get it right.

SBI Answer Format (as described by Amazon) - similar to STAR

Situation

What was it that your team was trying to achieve?

Behavior

What was your plan of action? What did you do?

Impact

What was the outcome? (measure impact with data) How many customers did you impact? What was the dollar value in business?

Most commonly asked behavioral questions across top tech companies

Here are some of the 30 most commonly asked behavioral interview questions across top tech companies:

Why do you want to work for X company?
Why do you want to leave your current/last company?
What are you looking for in your next role?
Tell me about a time when you had a conflict with a co-worker.
Tell me about a time in which you had a conflict and needed to influence somebody else.
What project are you currently working on?
What is the most challenging aspect of your current project?
What was the most difficult bug that you fixed in the past 6 months?
How do you tackle challenges? Name a difficult challenge you faced while working on a project, how you overcame it, and what you learned.
What are you excited about?
What frustrates you?
Imagine it is your first day here at the company. What do you want to work on? What features would you improve on?
What are the most interesting projects you have worked on and how might they be relevant to this company’s environment?
Tell me about a time you had a disagreement with your manager.
Talk about a project you are most passionate about, or one where you did your best work.
What does your best day of work look like?
What is something that you had to push for in your previous projects?
What is the most constructive feedback you have received in your career?
What is something you had to persevere at for multiple months?
Tell me about a time you met a tight deadline.
If this were your first annual review with our company, what would I be telling you right now?
Time management has become a necessary factor in productivity. Give an example of a time-management skill you’ve learned and applied at work.
Tell me about a problem you’ve had getting along with a work associate.
What aspects of your work are most often criticized?
How have you handled criticism of your work?
What strengths do you think are most important for your job position?
What words would your colleagues use to describe you?
What would you hope to achieve in the first six months after being hired?
Tell me why you will be a good fit for the position.

Amazon Software Engineer behavioral interview questions

How do you deal with a failed deadline?
Why do you want to work for Amazon?
Tell me about a situation where you had a conflict with a teammate.
In your professional experience have you worked on something without getting approval from your manager?
Tell me a situation where you would have done something differently from what you actually did.
What is the most exceedingly bad misstep you’ve made at any point?
Describe what Human Resources means to you.
How would you improve Amazon’s website?

Response Tips from Amazon

Practice using the STAR (situation, task, action, and result) method to answer the behavioral-based interview questions listed below, incorporating examples from the Leadership Principles.
Ensure each answer has a beginning, middle, and end. Describe the situation or problem, the actions you took, and the outcome.
Prepare short descriptions of a handful of different situations and be ready to answer follow-up questions with greater detail. Select examples that highlight your unique skills.
Have specific examples that showcase your experience, and demonstrate that you’ve taken risks, succeeded, failed and grown in the process.
Specifics are key; avoid generalizations. Give a detailed account of one situation for each question you answer, and use data or metrics to support your example.
Be forthcoming and straightforward. Don’t embellish or omit parts of the story.

Demo Behavioral Response from Amazon

Amazon Demo Youtube Video

Key Points From Introduction:

“Tell me about a time when…” means you’re being asked a Leadership Principle question
SBI = Situation, Behavior, Impact
- Situation: What was it that your team was trying to achieve
- Behavior: What was your plan of action? What did you do?
- Impact: What was the outcome? (measure impact with data) ie
  - How many customers did you impact?
  - What was the dollar value in business?
Come up with 6 work-related STAR experiences
figure out how they would be adapted to the Leadership Principles, you don’t need a different experience for each LP

Example Questions Given:

“Tell me about a time when you had to make a deciscion between two different technology choices.”
“Tell me about a time when you had to make a deciscion at work, but you didn’t have all the data available (that you’d like).”

Common Reasons for Incomplete Responses:

Didn’t quantify the impact
Wasn’t clear specifically what you did
“We knew there was an issue (how?) so we did a roleback (what specifically did you do though?).”

Key Points from Demo Complete Response:

A: “I knew there was an issue because I recieved an alarm, I was on call.”
A: “So I started looking at some of our dashboards and saw there was a big drop in our order count. That usually signifies that somethings gone south for the customer.”
A: “The problem was that I didn’t have enough time to figure out what had gone wrong at a root level.”
A: “I knew I couldn’t solve this by myself because our system is quite large.”
A: “So I set up a conference call with other engineers on the team and started a divide and conquer process.”
A: “Nominated other engineers to start looking into different aspects of the problem and triaging.”
A: “Once we hit about hour four, we didn’t know the exact impact on the customer but it was too risky to leave this feature live in production so I made the call to do a rollback.”
Q: “How did you know you wanted to do a rollback instead of continuing to investigate?”
A: “There’s a point of diminishing returns with this kind of investigation.”
A: “But we had a couple of customer service calls and it’s a good best practice to address it immediately and allow for time to go back and do the root cause analysis.”
Q: “And what was the follow-up on this?”
A: “A couple of days of detailed investigation on what the customer impact was in terms of number of customers effected and what the dollar amount of that was, but also trying to root cause what the subsystem failure was.”
A: “Once we had identified the problem we came up with a plan of action on how to mitigate it.”
A: “I was responsible for getting all the partner teams that were involved on board, organizing testing and ulitimately deploying again.”
Q: “Have you seen this issue happen again since?”
A: “No because we effectively root caused it.”
A: “But it allowed us to expand our regression test suite.”

The Leadership Principles & Sample Behavioral Questions

Youtube Video of Jeff Bezos Discussing Each Principle

1. Customer Obsession

Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.

Possible Questions (not from Amazon):

“Tell me about a time when you had to make a deciscion about how to best serve a customer or group of costomers.”

2. Ownership

Leaders are owners. They think long term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team. They never say, “that’s not my job.”

Possible Questions (not from Amazon):

“Tell me about a time when you had to make a deciscion between long-term value or short-term results.”
“Tell me about a time when you had to make a deciscion between acting on behalf of the entire company or just your team.”

3. Invent and Simplify

Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by “not invented here.” As we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time.

Possible Questions (not from Amazon):

“Tell me about a time when you had to innovate or invent a solution.”
“Tell me about a time when you had to make a deciscion about simplification.”
“Tell me about a time when you had to look for new ideas.”
“Tell me about a time when you had to do something new.”
“Tell me about a time when you were misunderstood by a team member or supervisor.”

4. Are Right, A Lot

Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs.

Possible Questions (not from Amazon):

“Tell me about a time when you were right about a judgement or deciscion you made.”
“Tell me about a time when you had to make a judgment based on instinct.”
“Tell me about a time when you had to seek out other perspectives.”
“Tell me about a time when you had to disconfirm a belief you had or a decision you made.”

5. Learn and Be Curious

Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them.

Possible Questions (not from Amazon):

“Tell me about a time when you had to keep learning to accomplish a task.”
“Tell me about a time when you sought out an oppourtunity to improve yourself at work.”
“Tell me about a time when you had to keep learning to accomplish a task.”

6. Hire and Develop the Best

Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent, and willingly move them throughout the organization. Leaders develop leaders and take seriously their role in coaching others. We work on behalf of our people to invent mechanisms for development like Career Choice.

Possible Questions (not from Amazon):

“Tell me about a time when you had to keep learning to accomplish a task.”
“Tell me about a time when you sought out an oppourtunity to improve yourself at work.”
“Tell me about a time when you had to keep learning to accomplish a task.”

7. Insist on the Highest Standards

Leaders have relentlessly high standards — many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and drive their teams to deliver high quality products, services, and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed.

Possible Questions (not from Amazon):

“Tell me about a time when you had to make a decision about how to enforce high standards.”
“Tell me about a time when you raised the bar for your team.”
“Tell me about a time when you were challanged to deliver a high quality product.”

8. Think Big

Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results. They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers.

Possible Questions (not from Amazon):

“Tell me about a time when you had to think big to accomplish something at work.”
“Tell me about a time when you accomplished something at work through bold action.”
“Tell me about a time when you had to think differently and look ahead to serve your customers.”

9. Bias for Action

Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk taking.

Possible Questions (not from Amazon):

“Tell me about a time when you had to work under a deadline that seemed impossible.”
“Tell me about a time when you made a deciscion at work that had to be reversed or corrected later.”
“Tell me about a time when you had to take a risk on a project at work.”

10. Frugality

Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention. There are no extra points for growing headcount, budget size, or fixed expense.

Possible Questions (not from Amazon):

“Tell me about a time when you had to make due with limited resources at work.”
“Tell me about a time when you had to be self-sufficient in a challenging work situation.”

11. Earn Trust

Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders do not believe their or their team’s body odor smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best.

Possible Questions (not from Amazon):

“Tell me about a time when you had to communicate something negative at work while remaining respectful and positive.”
“Tell me about a time when you miscommunicated something to a coworker and had to correct the miscommunication.”
“Tell me about a time when you had to communicate a mistep you made in a leadership role.”

12. Dive Deep

Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdote differ. No task is beneath them.

Possible Questions (not from Amazon):

“Tell me about a time when you performed a duty outside or beneath your job description.”
“Tell me about a time when you discovered that something was being miscommunicated by a coworker.”

13. Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit

Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly.

Possible Questions (not from Amazon):

“Tell me about a time when you had to work with a decision that you disagreed with.”
“Tell me about a time when you challenged a decision that was made by a teammate or superior.”

14. Deliver Results

Leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and in a timely fashion. Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never settle.

Possible Questions (not from Amazon):

“Tell me about a time when you worked through setbacks to meet a deadline at work.”

15. Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer

Leaders 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.

Possible Questions (not from Amazon):

“Tell me about a time when you were the earth’s best employer.” (joke)
“Tell me about a time when you did something to make your work environment better for your teammates.”
“Tell me about a time when you helped other members of your team grow.”
“Tell me about a time when you helped empower other members of your team.”
“Tell me about a time when you helped make your work environment more fun while still remaining productive and on task.”

16. Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility

We started in a garage, but we’re not there anymore. We are big, we impact the world, and we are far from perfect. We must be humble and thoughtful about even the secondary effects of our actions. Our local communities, planet, and future generations need us to be better every day. We must begin each day with a determination to make better, do better, and be better for our customers, our employees, our partners, and the world at large. And we must end every day knowing we can do even more tomorrow. Leaders create more than they consume and always leave things better than how they found them.

Possible Questions (not from Amazon):

“Tell me about a time when you dealt with an issue related to scaling at work.”
“Tell me about a time when you went the extra mile to help a customer.”

Airbnb Software Engineer behavioral interview questions

While loving to travel or appreciating Airbnb’s growth may be good answers, try to demonstrate the deep connection you have with the product.

What does “belong anywhere” mean to you?
What large problems in the world would you solve today?
Why do you like Airbnb?
If you had an unlimited budget and you could buy one gift for one person, what would you buy and who would you buy it for?
If you had an unlimited budget and you could go somewhere, where would you go?
Share one of your trips with us.
What is the most challenging project in or out of school that you have worked on in the last 6 months.
What is something that you don’t want from your last internship/job?
Give me an example of when you’ve been a good host.
What’s something you’d like to remove from the Airbnb experience?
What is something new that you can teach your interviewer in a few minutes?
Tell me about why you want to work here.
What is the best gift you have ever given or received?
Tell me about a time you were uncomfortable and how you dealt with it.
Explain a project that you worked on recently.
What do you think of Airbnb?
Tell me something about yourself and why you’d be a good fit for the position.
Name a situation where you were impressed by a company’s customer service.
How did you work with senior management on large projects as well as multiple internal teams?
Tell me about a time you had to give someone terrible news.
If you were a gerbil, which gerbil would you be?
What excites you about the company?
How does Airbnb impact our guests and hosts?
What part of our mission resonates the most with you?
- Mission and Vision of Airbnb
  - Airbnb’s mission is to Create a world where anyone can belong anywhere.
- Values and Principles of Airbnb
  - Champion the Mission
    - We’re united with our community to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere.
  - Be a Host
    - We’re caring, open, and encouraging to everyone we work with.
  - Embrace the Adventure
    - We’re driven by curiosity, optimism, and the belief that every person can grow.
  - Be a Cereal Entrepreneur
    - We’re determined and creative in transforming our bold ambitions into reality.

ByteDance Software Engineer behavioral interview questions

What do you know about and why?
Take me through a product you launched from start to end
What’s the biggest achievement in your previous projects?
Tell me about a recent failure and what you learned from the experience
Why do you want to work at ByteDance?
What makes you a good fit for this position?
What excites you about the role?

Dropbox Software Engineer behavioral interview questions

Talk about your favorite project.
If you were hired here what would you do?
State an experience about how you solved a technical problem. Be specific about the diagnosis and process.

Hired Software Engineer behavioral interview questions

Tell me about yourself.
What is your biggest strength and area of growth?
Why are you interested in this opportunity?
What are your salary expectations?
Why are you looking to leave your current company?
Tell me about a time your work responsibilities got a little overwhelming. What did you do?
Give me an example of a time when you had a difference of opinion with a team member. How did you handle that?
Tell me about a challenge you faced recently in your role. How did you tackle it? What was the outcome?
Where do you want to be in five years?
Tell me about a time you needed information from someone who wasn’t responsive. What did you do?

Lyft Software Engineer behavioral interview questions

Tell me about your most interesting/challenging project to date.
Why Lyft? What are you looking for in the next role?

Palantir Software Engineer behavioral interview questions

What is something 90% of people disagree with you about?
What is broken around you?
How do you deal with difficult coworkers? Think about specific instances where you resolved conflicts.
How did you win over the difficult employees?
Tell me about an analytical problem that you have worked on in the past.
What are your three strengths and three weaknesses?
If you were in charge of picking projects for Palantir, what problem would you try to solve?
What are some of the best and worst things about your current company?
What would your manager say about you?
Describe Palantir to your grandmother.
Teach me something you’ve learned.
Tell me a time when you predicted something.
If your supervisors were to rate you on a scale of 1-10, what would they rate you?
What was the most fun thing you did recently?
Tell me the story of how you became who you are today and what made you apply to Palantir.

Slack Software Engineer behavioral interview questions

Tell me something about your internship.
Why do you want to join Slack?
Tell me about your past projects.
Explain me your toughest project and the working architecture.
Apart from technical knowledge, what did you learn during your internship?
If someone has a different viewpoint to do a project like different programming language, how would handle this situation?
What are your most interesting subjects and why?
Did you find any bugs in Slack?
What is your favorite feature and why?

Stack Overflow Software Engineer behavioral interview questions

What have you built?
What is the hardest technical problem you have run into?
How did you solve it?
Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
Why do you want to work here?
How do you handle disagreements with co-workers?

Stripe Software Engineer behavioral interview questions

How do you stay up to date with the latest technologies?
Explain a project that you worked on recently that was difficult.
Where do you see yourself in five years?

Twitter Software Engineer behavioral interview questions

What would your previous boss say your biggest strength was?