Behavioral Interview Questions and Answers Examples from a REAL Google Hiring Manager

welcome to the interview prep guru where i help you get prepared get confident and get the job i'm a real google hiring manager and a professional interview coach who has spent thousands of hours on the other side of the table i've truly seen and heard it all and this channel is all about sharing the best interview tips with you so that you can ace that job interview and land your dream job my interview coaching clients 200 an hour to learn these proven interview tips thanks to my coaching and their hard work many of them have landed their dream jobs including jobs they never thought they could get at big tech companies like facebook google and amazon in this video i'll cover the five main types of behavioral interview questions and answers these are questions that i regularly ask in interviews including one question that trips up almost everyone i'll teach you a response strategy for each of these questions and then i'll give a short example of an ideal answer to a practice behavioral question in case you aren't familiar with behavioral interview questions these are a type of interview question that asks you about your past experiences behavioral interview questions are designed to learn how you have responded to certain workplace situations in the past to get an idea of how you are likely to respond to various workplace situations in the future the key to answering all behavioral interview questions correctly is to give context explain what you did then tell me what you learned and how you would do things differently if you found yourself in the same situation in the future i will create a future video diving into the specific framework for answering these questions but you can also see the framework in action with all of the practice behavioral interview questions and answers in this video let's get started with the first type of behavioral question the conflict question companies want to hire people who understand that conflict is normal and healthy and they want to hire people who have healthy approaches to understanding and resolving conflict this is why conflict questions are a common behavioral interview question the most important strategy for answering a conflict question is to avoid drama this is not real housewives and no one wants you to spill any tea during a job interview keep it professional and at all costs never speak poorly about your manager your company or your colleagues my second strategy is to show that you can maturely handle conflict you'll want to demonstrate that you understand that conflict is normal and that it can be healthy you always want to demonstrate that you bring healthy approaches to resolving conflict my third strategy is to show that you can create win-win situations ideally in ways that benefit everyone involved not just the internal team but also your users your customers or your clients i mean who wouldn't want to work with someone who creates productive positive and sustainable work environments right to summarize the strategy for conflict questions is to avoid drama to show that you can maturely handle conflict and to demonstrate that you create win-win situations now i will practice answering a conflict question using these three strategies the question is give me an example of a time you faced a conflict while working on a team how did you handle that absolutely as part of my current role i manage strategic projects that often involve the development of new technologies and products that are critical to the company's growth these projects often feature tight deadlines and hard to predict technical risk in a recent project we were on a tight deadline to complete the engineering design of a hardware prototype during one round of testing we found an issue with the hardware functionality the conflict arose because the mechanical engineering team blamed the electrical engineering team for the failure and vice versa we were at an impasse to find the solution because we weren't sure which of the two teams was best positioned to solve the problem this conflict was a major risk to our project schedule instead of letting the issue faster i invited both teams to a problem-solving session i opened the session with an image of our users to re-center everyone on what we were all working on the product by taking the focus off of the conflict and reminding the teams of our responsibility to the users their moods instantly thawed we spent four hours redesigning the hardware together we came up with a creative design that was easy and economical to manufacture and it passed testing on the first attempt we were able to meet the original schedule and all of the engineers that worked on the solution were proud to have worked on this innovative design my greatest learning from this situation was the recognition that i played a key role in finding a win-win for our teams our business and our users simply by reminding the teams that our ultimate goal was to make great products for our users i had always taken for granted that this was a key role on the team but in this case it really saved our project and it allowed us to turn a failure into an innovation while keeping team morale high today i keep this role in mind at all times and i ensure that the team is always focused on the user which really helps us focus on what matters if i were faced with the same situation today i'd probably choose to call in just the team leads for the two teams that were in conflict it happened that we were able to get to a wonderful solution with both teams present but it did take a lot of time from the whole team and not everyone participated as heavily in that first session i believe that we could have resolved the immediate issue more quickly with the small and focused group and then we could have invited the broader team in at just the right time so they could all contribute in their own ways okay let's talk through what i did there you notice that when i talked about the conflict between the two engineering teams i used neutral professional language i didn't take sides and i focus on the fact that the conflict was a risk to the project rather than ruminating on the conflict dynamics in detail the interviewer doesn't need to know that one of the engineers threatened to quit or that the mechanical engineering manager was refusing to speak to the electrical engineering manager the interviewer just needs to know there was a conflict and that i resolved it no drama and it's clear that i can maturely handle conflict next you'll notice that when i discuss the outcome i highlight the multiple wins the wins for the company the wins for the project schedule the wins for the individual team members getting to work on something innovative and the ultimate win for the user i definitely showed that i create win-win situations in the workplace after hearing this answer i want to hire me so you should use these same strategies as you practice your responses to conflict questions let's get started with the second type of behavioral question the adaptability question companies want to hire people who have the ability to connect the dots and decide when to make changes to their work approaches so that they can achieve the optimal outcomes for the business these types of behavioral questions try to assess your willingness and ability to adapt your work to meet the business needs my first strategy for answering an adaptability question is to demonstrate your flexibility in the face of changes happening around you you need to show how you can be responsive to a changing situation and how you use your flexibility to adapt your approaches so that you can meet the needs of any evolving situation and look it's not enough to be willing to change direction when someone tells you to you need to be analyzing the data and the signals at all times so that you can understand when a change of direction is needed companies want to hear not just that you're flexible when they tell you to make a change but that you can be an agent of positive change when it's needed to summarize the strategies for adaptability questions are to demonstrate flexibility and to explain how you connected the dots next i will practice answering an adaptability question the question is describe a time when your team or company was undergoing some change how did you adapt in my most recent company we had really outgrown our organization structure as the company had grown really quickly the leadership team decided that we needed to add another senior engineering leader to work alongside me and share some of the loads so that we could ensure that the engineering team was focused and that everyone on the team had the right amount of management support the engineers on my team were nervous about the change so i took a three-pronged strategy to ensure that they could better understand and be part of the change first i invited all of the candidates for the role to meet with my team as their final step in the interview process this would allow the team to understand the candidates goals and experience and it also turned out to be a big selling point and attracted a great leader second i mapped out our team's goals back to the larger organizational strategy this reminded the team that these changes were going to help us grow and help us achieve our goals lastly i made it clear that i supported the change and i was looking forward to having a new leader to work with and to learn from in the end we hired an experienced leader who actually leveled me up as well as the entire engineering team my greatest learning from this situation was really the empowering feeling that i could map this change back to the team's goals in a way that would really help them understand and ultimately support the change seeing everyone on my team rally behind the candidate that we ultimately hired showed me that that my efforts really helped bring them along and that they had worked if i were faced with the same problem today i would probably take my engagement a step further i feel like i did a great job reacting to the change that had been decided above my level but after i got involved i was surprised how open the leadership team was to hearing my feedback i had known for some time that i was overstretched and that we needed more support for the team but i had been nervous to raise my hand and to ask for help so in many ways i actually doubt that i would face this situation today because i probably would not have hesitated to raise my hand and actually be the one proactively pitching the leadership team on the need to hire an additional leader to support the growth of the business okay let's talk through what i did there you noticed that i demonstrated a great deal of leadership humility and accountability in my response you might be asking yourself these aren't really part of the formula you gave me but any time you can sprinkle hirable characteristics into your response please do i showed my flexibility by talking about the many pronged strategy i used to meet the team where they were and i showed that i know how to connect the dots when the business grows the team grows and that means we need more managers overall this response hits the two main strategies for the adaptability question and it incorporates other great characteristics of people i'd want to hire so feel free to introduce other characteristics as long as you hit the two main strategies as well let's get started with the next type of behavioral question the prioritization question companies want to hire good problem solvers who are always working on the most important problems so these questions are meant to understand how well you prioritize your time and your effort to ensure that the company's top goals are achieved the most important strategy for answering a prioritization question is to tie your work to the company's goals you need to demonstrate that you understand how your work drives the company's success because this shows that you understand how to think strategically about your work i mean who wouldn't want to hire someone who is able to articulate how their work drives the success of the company right another way to demonstrate your ability to think strategically as you prioritize your work is to discuss the trade-offs that you had to make in your decision-making process explaining these trade-offs exposes your assumptions and your strategic thought process which reinforces that you have an approach to prioritization that you can bring to this new company to ensure that you're always working on the most important work to summarize the two strategies for prioritization questions are first tie your work back to the company's goals and second explain the trade-offs now i will practice answering a prioritization question the question is give me an example of a time when you are working on multiple projects how did you handle that sure i was once responsible for three different new product development projects all of which that were at different stages of development each of the projects had a strategic importance to the company because each of them allowed us to enter into a new market when things went as planned i was able to manage the load of all three projects at once but anytime there was an issue on one of the projects i would quickly become a bottleneck the first time that i realized i was a bottleneck i sat down and looked at the three projects while all of them had strategic impact to the company it was clear that when we had multiple issues going on at once i should have to prioritize one of the projects that was nearest to completion this trade-off was great at helping with prioritization but it was a painful trade-off for everyone and it really wasn't the optimal solution for the company i was also responsible for some of the individual contributor work for each of the projects for example i was in charge of establishing pricing for the products i was able to find an analyst on the team who had an interest in learning pricing techniques and they had the bandwidth to do the work under my supervision by training the analysts to take on the pricing work i freed up much of my time to focus on the highest value work keeping all these projects on track and whenever we had multiple issues happening at once on multiple projects we didn't have to choose one project or the other now i have sufficient bandwidth to help with all of the issues on all of the projects my greatest learning from this situation was really the power of creative problem solving i was overwhelmed with too much work but not everything on my plate was actually the highest value work for me to do so rather than sacrificing my focus as the project manager i found someone who was looking for a growth opportunity and could take on one of my most time-consuming tasks they were able to grow in their role and they even earned a promotion and all three of my projects were delivered on time which allowed the company to enter three new strategic markets with three new products if i were faced with this same situation today i would immediately look for ways to delegate some of the individual contributor work that i was doing rather than my first attempt which was trying to prioritize amongst three critical strategic projects in my projects that i own today i try to have a regular sync with each team member so i can learn more about their interests and bandwidth so that we can optimally balance work across the team and in particular i am vigilant about ensuring that i have enough capacity to ensure the strategic projects are delivered on time without me becoming a bottleneck okay let's talk through what i did there you notice that i immediately talked in the context section about how my work fits into the company's goals generally i suggest doing this in the context when possible since it really sets the stage for the rest of your response i described a sub-optimal solution only working on the nearest term project when there was an issue on any project to highlight some trade-offs that i faced and my ability to seek out a better solution lastly you'll notice that i created a win-win situation through delegation of the pricing work and that is an expert move note that all the strategies i'm teaching you can be used on any of these types of behavioral questions but in order to make this lesson bite-sized i focus on the key strategies for each type of behavioral question if you see a chance to use a conflict strategy on a prioritization question go for it as long as you've also covered the two main strategies for prioritization questions as well let's get started with the next type of behavioral question the communication question companies want to hire people who are masters of communication because at the end of the day employees spend more than half of their time communicating whether it's sharing ideas or problem solving or sharing updates on their work being able to do the job is actually only half of the job the other half is being effective at collaboration and communication this is the strategy that most people miss in their answer so pay attention my first strategy for communication questions is to demonstrate that you are able to think of everyone who needs to be communicated with and they are able to ensure that they get the right information delivered to them in a format they can use at the right time to enable all of them to make the right decisions for their work and to drive the company's goals secondly you want to convey that you have a practiced approach to communicating and collaborating with others in your answers you want to come across as someone who is comfortable communicating in written and verbal formats and for various purposes to summarize the strategies for the communication question are to demonstrate that you can communicate to different audiences and to share your communication framework now i will practice answering a communication question the question is tell me about a successful presentation you gave and why you think it was a hit i was once responsible for giving an organization-wide presentation about a structure change we were making to the company organizational changes are always a source of nerves and tension for team members and this org change came at a time when the team was already under stress due to some headwinds we were experiencing in the business i knew it was going to be extremely important for me to communicate effectively on this change my first approach when thinking about any communication is always to map out all of the key stakeholders that need to learn about the change to do this i wrote down all the groups of people in the organization who were affected by the change even if in the slightest way for each of them i put together a communication strategy that ensured they would hear about the change at least three different times in at least three different formats for the stakeholders that were most impacted by the change i put together pre-announcement syncs with the leaders of those teams to ensure that the leaders were equipped to answer follow-up questions after we made the announcement on the day of the announcement i gave a presentation that emphasized the reasons for the change and how it could improve our chances of tackling the business headwinds that we were experiencing i addressed key stakeholder concerns that i had learned from the pre-work with the leaders of those most impacted teams immediately after the presentation i made myself and other leaders available to answer group and individual questions and emails were sent to everyone in the organization with details about the change the feedback from the teams was that the presentation succeeded at being timely and empathetic and that they felt the change was a positive change that they were welcoming for the business at the time i was surprised by how much time i was spending in preparation for this announcement but the lack of issues after the announcement more than covered the time that i had put into making it go well i learned a lot from this experience about the power of stakeholder mapping and of bringing key allies into the conversation to ensure that all major stakeholder concerns are being addressed proactively to this day i follow this framework for communicating changes at every scale whether it's a team change all the way up to entire organization changes if i were faced with the same situation today i'd probably bring in the leaders of the impacted teams earlier they were such a valuable source of insights which ended up resulting in meaningfully positive changes to the format and delivery of the communications having those insights earlier would have saved time and energy in preparation okay let's talk about what i did there you notice that i talk about stakeholders which are synonymous with audiences so i clearly showed that i know the importance of communicating to different audiences i also expressed my personal communication framework people need to hear things three different times in three different formats which shows that i'm a seasoned and practiced communicator make sure you address both of these strategies and your communication answers as well let's get started with the final type of behavioral question the values question companies want to hire people who have values that are aligned to the organization and they like to hire people who know themselves well enough to know and articulate their own personal values as a manager i like to understand my team members values so that i know how to properly motivate them because of this i often ask these values-based behavioral questions in my interviews let's get started with the final type of behavioral question the values question companies want to hire people who have values that are aligned to the organization and they like to hire people who know themselves well enough to know and articulate their own personal values as a manager i like to understand my team members values so that i know how to properly motivate them so i often ask these values based behavioral questions in my interviews the first strategy for a values question is to know your own values you'll want to be able to demonstrate that you know your own values and that your values are well aligned to the company's values to do this first you need to know your values and then you'll want to do some research into the company's values assuming that these are both aligned you should ensure that you answer values questions in ways that express your own values but also tie back to the company's values i'll show you how to do this in the practice question secondly these values questions usually give you the opportunity to just be yourself to be expressive and open and vulnerable and you should take the opportunity remember interviewers are people too and we want to feel excited to work with you sharing a bit more about yourself will really help us connect to you to summarize the strategies for a values question are to know your values and to be honest and vulnerable next i will practice answering a values question for you the question is give me an example of a time you were able to be creative with your work what was exciting or difficult about it in my most recent role my boss asked me to take on a nebulous project to address a concern from the engineering team that there weren't enough opportunities for recognition this request was of course open-ended but it was clearly important to ensure that everyone felt seen and heard in the engineering team one of our company values is to adopt a growth mindset which means that people need feedback to know where they should grow one of my personal values is to ensure that the people who work around me feel heard and seen so this project was very aligned with my values i did some research into how other teams within the company ensured that their team members had opportunities for recognition what i found out was that each of these teams had peer nominated awards programs that were quite successful i decided to build out an engineering specific peer nominated awards program i got creative when it came to the naming of the program which i modeled after the grammy awards and i also had fun designing the award trophy i hired a lego artist to design the trophy and if you know anything about engineering you can imagine that this trophy was a big hit we received hundreds of nominations in the first few months and in our next employee survey we heard clear feedback that the awards program had successfully addressed the recognition problem my boss was very happy one key learning for me was that open-ended projects are both a blessing and a curse they're a blessing because you can be creative they're a curse because you might not be able to do them very quickly if you get lost in the open-ended nature of the problem i knew that i needed to create a timely solution to resolve the team's concerns quickly so i tried to narrow the solution space to make it more manageable nailing down the solution and awards program gave me the opportunity to get creative with the details including the famed lego trophy which ultimately drove the high level of satisfaction and the adoption of the program if i were faced with the same problem today i'd spend more time thinking about how to ensure that all team members could be recognized one of my personal values is to help others be seen and heard and while the awards program was very successful i always felt that some of the quieter team members are still less likely to be recognized or nominated so over time i worked on a manager training program that focused on one-on-one recognition to ensure that everyone in the engineering team felt recognized and was getting clear and actionable feedback not just those that were being nominated for the awards okay let's talk through what i did there you notice that i explicitly called out both my values and the company values as i was setting the context and i was open and vulnerable throughout the answer sharing ways that i could have done better in my initial launch you probably took note that i also shared a bit about my way of handling ambiguous problem props this is not one of the values question strategies but as we saw in the answer debrief to the adaptability question you can and should sprinkle in other hirable characteristics into your answers to behavioral questions whenever you can employers always want to hire people who can handle ambiguity and apply good judgment so sprinkling in your approach to handling open-ended situations will always help you stand out as long as you have also covered the two main strategies for the values question already today i went through the best and proven strategies for the five most common types of behavioral questions along with behavioral interview questions and answers you now know the ideal strategies for answering these common behavioral interview questions in a future video i will give you the secret proven formula for how to structure your responses this will give you the entire formula to answer behavioral questions first you need to know the strategy which you do now and then you can learn the response framework so that you can handle any type of behavioral question and stand out against other candidates who don't know the full formula subscribe to my channel and ring the bell to get my best interview tips faster please drop a comment in this video to give me ideas on other content you'd like me to cover and if you use these tips in your interview prep drop a comment let me know how your interviews go best of luck and happy interview prep you

Channel: Pocket Board: Mentorship, Modernized

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Keywords: interview tips, interview prep, job interview tips, interview preparation, behavioral interview questions and answers, behavioral interview questions, behavioral interview questions and answers examples, job interview questions and answers, interview questions and answers

Id: szhkJjZKA-I

Length: 27min 52sec (1672 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 30 2021