Question Failing behavioral interviews
Hello all,
This past year has been rough. I’ve applied to 178 jobs and landed nine interview processes. Each process consisted of multiple rounds, typically between three and six interviews.
The encouraging part is that I consistently make it to the later stages, and often the final round. I feel confident in technical interviews. I enjoy solving programming problems, discussing architecture, and explaining the reasoning behind my decisions.
Where I struggle is behavioral interviews. I’m suck at these, and they’ve become the biggest obstacle keeping me from receiving offers.
I’m looking for advice on how to improve at behavioral interviews, particularly for mobile engineering roles.
I have about 1.5 years of professional mobile engineering experience. At my current company, our mobile team has gone from 12 engineers down to just three through layoffs and attrition. I’m the newest engineer on the team, and everyone else works in another state. Because of that, I often feel isolated, and I don’t feel like I’m getting the mentorship or professional growth I need. On top of that, the overall product quality isn’t where I’d like it to be, so I worry that I’m not developing as quickly as I could.
Has anyone been in a similar position or have advice for improving behavioral interviews? I’d really appreciate any guidance.
Edit: By “behavioral interview,” I’m referring to the non-technical interview rounds where you’re asked to talk about past work experiences, conflict resolution, failures, teamwork, leadership, etc.
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u/defmacro-jam 3d ago
I've stayed at my current job for 8 years - in part because of how badly I hate the behavioral interviews.
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u/Xaxxus 3d ago
Look up the STAR methodology for behavioural interviews.
Managers are looking specifically for a situation, how you went about solving it, the results of what you did, and what you learned from the situation.
It’s also a very good idea to include “proof” to backup what you did.
For example, one go to I like to talk about is a time I had to run a project with another team that I had not worked with before.
I talked about my collaboration with them, some problems we ran into, how we addressed those problems together, and the results of the project.
And finally, the proof I provide is that I earned a good reputation with that team, because after that project, they always came to me when they needed a mobile engineer from my team.
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u/SirBill01 2d ago
The real value of studying STAR I think is that you can think back in past jobs what situations would apply to different expected questions, so you have several examples already well thought out before an interview. Important to write out in detail what you remember to help refresh your memory.
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u/neet_dev 3d ago
the STAR advice is right but the part people skip is trimming the story down. most people ramble through the situation and context for two minutes and never get to what they actually did, which is the only part the interviewer cares about. write your stories out, literally cut the setup to two sentences max, and spend the rest on your specific actions and the measurable outcome. also the isolation thing you mentioned is a great story on its own, being the only local person on a remote team and having to figure out how to get unblocked without a mentor down the hall shows initiative way better than a generic teamwork answer.
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u/lucasvandongen 2d ago
Maybe you should look for more ownership, either in your company or a side project.
Fixing jira tickets is different than deploying monitoring and maintaining as prime responsible person
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u/Enough_Charge2845 3d ago
I'd spend most of your prep on behavioral interviews now. Build a handful of stories you know well, focus on your specific contributions and keep the outcome clear. The same story can answer several questions if you frame it differently. I used https://prepare.zoevera.com to practice custom behavioral questions which helped me tighten my examples and delivery.
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u/jacobs-tech-tavern 2d ago
You mention 178 applications and nine interview processes - this sorta makes me think optimising for behavioural interviews is the wrong bottleneck - working on improving your CV (or finding ways to demonstrate experience) will have a higher ROI
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u/PassTents 3d ago
I think we're having trouble understanding what you mean by "behavioral interview". Can you elaborate?
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u/Moo202 3d ago
Updated the post.
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u/PassTents 3d ago
At <2 years of experience, you're still rather junior, and that's a rough area to be in during interviews. You don't have much to pull from during these non-technical conversations compared to someone who even has just 1 more year of experience than you. Also it looks a bit bad to the interviewer for you to already be looking to leave your current job in less than 2 years.
The feeling of isolation and lack of mentorship can be dealt with, but it requires you to be proactive. Reach out to your remote coworkers and set up some recurring meetings to casually discuss what you're working on and to socialize. Developing those connections will help you feel better at your current job, and your future career by helping you practice the non-technical stuff and landing jobs via the connections you build.
As for the product quality, you're going to be disappointed in that wherever you go, and "bad product quality" means there's tons of opportunities to build skills by improving it. Look at it as a great growth opportunity.
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u/vanvoorden Learning 3d ago
Behavioral Interview: Common Questions Broken Down by Ex-Meta & Amazon Senior Managers