When you're going through interviews, you're bound to encounter the same questions at various stages through the pipeline. At times like this, it's nice to be able to whip out a nice can of spam, let it marinate for a few hours, and fry yourself up some spam musubi. And by that, I obviously mean prepare and refine your responses to these questions - but the analogy doesn't miss. You'll also get a chance to ask your interviewer questions. These are sometimes overlooked as only for your further edification about the company, but they can also be an opportunity for you to continue to impress your interviewers.
STAR Questions
STAR questions are a behavioral interview technique that helps candidates articulate their past experiences by focusing on the Situation, Task, Action, and Result. This structured approach allows interviewers to gain insights into how candidates handle challenges and achieve goals in real-world scenarios. You'll often hear starter phrases like "Tell me about a time" or "How did you solve it?" - that's your cue to hit those four points above.
Some examples:
- Tell me about a time you had to work with various departments and stakeholders.
- Have you ever had a conflict with a coworker? How did you handle it?
- Describe a situation where you had to meet a tight deadline. How did you manage your time?
- Can you share an experience where you had to adapt to significant changes at work?
- Tell me about a time when you took the initiative to improve a process or project.
- Describe a time when you had to persuade someone to see things your way. What was your approach?
- Tell me about a time you received constructive criticism from a manager. How did you respond?
Answering these types of questions can be stressful - but these are a couple of the steps that I find have helped me in my interviews.
- Prepare - Keep a few key projects from your career front of mind and rehearsed. I'd bet that 99% of the time, if you dig deep enough, you can answer most, if not all, of the questions above in one project - but it's always good to have multiple examples to refer to.
- Be Clear - When describing your past projects, always start with a clear context for how you got to the situation that applies to the question. Be brief, but make sure a stranger could understand the scope of the project and your role in it.
- Relevance - Use language from the question so that the interviewer doesn't have to draw their own conclusions about how you're answering their question: "I was able to adapt by...", "I saw there was a lack in the process, so I took the initiative to jump in and fix it."
- Result - Always make sure to wrap up your answer with a concise one-sentence summary that gives the higher-level view of the STAR question. Think of it like an arrow diagram. "We needed X -> ran into problem Y -> chose to implement Z -> and it was successful or unsuccessful because W."
Asking Your Own Questions
I cannot think of a time when I was wrapping up a call with an interviewer that they did not ask if I had any questions. In the earlier stages, just making sure to ask the logistical things is important, and getting clarity into the process is great. But at later stages, you get the opportunity to ask questions of managers and potential teammates. And while most people think of these as questions you use to understand team dynamics - they're still a part of the interview, and you can use them to continue to move up the rankings in the interview process. Here are just a couple of questions that I've asked and why I think they help me in the process. Take note of the responses you hear for use in your STAR interviews.
Have Engineering Decisions Influenced a Business Outcome? How?
This question gives you great insight into the relationship between engineering and upper management. You'll hear about hackathons or "10(-25)% time" or that one guy that added a chatbot integration to their team Slack. There are a lot of possible answers to this question, but it shows that you might be interested in driving these kinds of new initiatives and pushing the business forward from an early stage.
A similar question: What are the biggest challenges facing this team in the next year?
What Does Success Look Like in This Role?
You might have heard this one before - but I think this is always an important question to ask when you are talking to a manager or senior member of the team. Not only do you get the chance to hear a clear outline of what you need to do to push for promotion, but you're also getting a description of what skills your interviewer is looking for in a top candidate.
Similar questions:
- How do you identify over and underperformers in this role? What do you do when you've identified them?
- What does success in the first 6 months of this role look like?
Other Hard Questions
If I Were to Call Your Past Managers - What Would They Say About You?
Very similar to what are your biggest strengths/weaknesses - the goal is not for you to just compliment yourself with simple answers like "smart" and "driven." But to show that you have the ability to self-analyze and be aware of the impact that you have both positively and negatively. Don't trash talk yourself.
Conclusion
There's a decent amount of content there, and honestly, I don't feel like I scratched the surface. There's a lot more that goes into each question you get from an interviewer, and I hope to come back and update this article as I learn more. But my summary would be keep it real, keep it clear, and keep it relevant. Embrace the journey of learning and refining your interview skills!
