Behavioural Interview Cheat Sheet

I mean, it is all about culture …right?

Let’s get two things out of the way,

1. I am sorry last week’s email did not find its way to you

2. I have opened pre-registrations for my one-day LIVE CV and Interview training course.

If you want to learn how to write a brilliant CV and nail behavioural/technical interviews then make sure you follow this link to pre-register. Each class will consist of only ten people and there will be limited training days each month. 

Now.

Many of you will be realising that trying to get an apprenticeship is quite competitive and so that leaves you with applying to junior engineering roles.

When going down this route, quite often you can expect to do a technical AND behavioural interview. 

What we are going to concentrate on in this newsletter are 5 things you need to know about behavioural interviews and how to ace them. 

1. Think STAR

A behavioural interview is mainly to understand how you think and whether you would be a cultural fit for the company. Some are more intense than others and as you progress up the chain of command they will be more in-depth.

However, for the majority of you doing them they will be around 20 minutes and consist of a selection of questions similar to these:

• Can you tell me about a time when you had to make a hard decision?

• Could you tell us how you would handle asking for help if you were stuck?

• Have you ever had to handle conflict and how would you approach it if you did?

Without practising these questions ahead of time. They can be a little difficult to handle on the spot. Without a doubt, to get better at behavioural interviews the best thing you can do is to practice.

Luckily, for me and you, there is a format you can use to absolutely knock these questions out of the park.

For those of you who may not have heard of STAR, it stands for Situation, Task, Action, and Result

This is the default framework used for behavioural interviews for a good reason!

It allows you the opportunity to format your answers to your questions and maximise your impact. Think of STAR for answering questions like a design pattern in code. It lays the foundation for you to deliver the best that you can and to BUILD on top.

Photo by Daniel Olah on Unsplash

2. Use STORIES

In my experience using stories is the greatest way to handle the STAR method. You will come across a lot more relatable as often they will overlap with the interviewer. They allow you to give some more details.

So, if we use a story as an example. We could produce something like this:

Situation:

I was once working for a company that had quite a difficult onboarding process.

Task:

I needed to get it done in the required time, however I was struggling.

Action:

Instead of staying stuck. I found a person at the company who had started a few months before me. I reached out to them and asked for some guidance. I also took this opportunity to write down my steps and I submitted it to my manager to help people in the future.

Result:

My manager was really grateful and I got a shout-out at the company get-together. My onboarding documentation has saved many hours of lost time and enabled people to come into the company much smoother. 

If I was listening to this answer here is what I would pick up on.

They had a problem, did not make it hard, did not sit there and struggle. Reached out for help and showed pro-activeness, and communication. Then wrote clear documentation which was well received to help future onboarders resulting in saving the company time and money.

As you may have also noticed. The example we used here was not tech-related and with a few tweaks is something you could use for your situation. The story does not need to be work-related if you have not had many jobs. They can also be from home. 

3. Understand The Question

A common misconception around behavioural questions is that they are just looking for one singular answer. 

The whole concept based around interviews like these stems a little further. I guess you could, in essence, say the questions are loaded.

What do I mean by loaded?

Well, let’s take a look at one of the questions we listed in number 1.

Q. Could you tell me about a time you needed help and how you went about asking?

Through some eyes. This question seems quite straightforward. I mean, you needed help and you asked for it. It is all about you. Right?

Wrong.

They are not asking this question to understand whether you will need help. In the wise words of Dumbledore ‘Help will always be given to those at Hogwarts who ask’.

The answer they want to hear is whether you understand how difficult tasks can have an impact on the team, your deliverables, and the company.

So, a perfect answer for this would be to touch on how you asked for help but never left it too late to not impact the sprint, or deliver your project work on time. 

For each question make sure you think about more than you.

4. Take Your Time

I think this should be number one on our list. 

The quickest way to fail a behavioural interview is by rushing all your answers and trying to answer as quickly as possible. 

These questions take time. Using the STAR technique takes time. So, you need to take time.

In pretty much every interview I have ever undertaken, when it comes to behavioural questions I always listen to the question - then ask for a moment to think about an answer. 

There is always a little awkward pause but they will NEVER say no. 

Use the time to think clearly about the question and how to formulate your answer.

Bonus points if you have answers pre-prepared covering the main questions that get asked. Then use this time to think about how great of a salary you are about to get offered. 

5. Communication

Finally, communication.

We covered how behavioural questions are more than just simple questions. Then we talked about the STAR approach and taking your time to answer. 

The other thing you should be aware of is that these interviews are also about how effectively you communicate.

I do not mean how well you converse in English, but how you convey your messages and get your point across.

Do you come across as aggressive? Were your answers fair and show you in a good light? Did you come across as the type of person they would want to work with?

Do not forget. There is limited space on my training days so if you want to land a job in software, cyber, or anything tech-related you can check out the pre-registration form here to stay updated for when tickets go live.

As always, if you took any value from this, please share it on your socials and tag me!

All the best,

Ishaq