Shadowing Practice: Behavioral Interview Discussion with Ex-Meta Hiring Committee Member - Learn English Speaking with Video
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So hey everyone and welcome to another instance of Hello Interviews, very clever name where we're interviewing about interviews.
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I kind of love the idea here.
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Today I'm really excited to introduce you guys to Austin McDonald.
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Austin is a friend of mine.
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He's also a former senior engineering manager at Meta slash Facebook
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where he was actually working as the hiring committee chair for iOS and Android Pipeline.
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So very familiar.
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I think you were working in recruiting tools, Is that right?
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Yeah, that's right.
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My last four years, I was building the tools that the recruiters
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and the sourcers and even the candidates would use every day for their interviews.
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So I can't think of anyone more qualified to tell us about the interviewing process than you.
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Austin also has a passion for behavioral interviews.
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And I know on this channel, we really haven't gone into that enough.
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We really focused a lot of our content on system design.
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So I'm really excited to kind of talk with him about behavioral interviewing.
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And then also, if you guys are interested in learning more, I'll leave it in the description.
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But Austin has a great sub stack where he shares tips
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and advice on how you can actually think about behavioral interviews and some preparation steps and things.
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Definitely worth a subscribe and a check out if you haven't looked at it already.
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I sometimes hear from candidates and they say, oh, you know, I'm good.
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I can talk about my experience or, you know, I don't think that's as important as my technical interviews.
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Why should candidates care about behavioral interviews?
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If they've got a lot of good experience, isn't that good enough?
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Yeah, great, great question.
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A classic response, and I hear this a lot.
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So to me, behavioral interviews is the number one interview type that is underprepared for.
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And I think if you just gone online and read some article about the STAR method or whatever, that is not going to be enough,
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I think, for you to really shine.
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And so I have a couple of things that I tell candidates.
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So number one thing is if you get good at behavioral interviewing,
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if you really understand what it means to communicate your experience and what you've done in a successful way, you will actually become a better engineer.
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So, you know, with some limitations, I would say
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that practicing coding interviews is not going to necessarily make you a better engineer on a day to day basis.
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I think that maybe practicing system design might make you better.
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But really, if you understand what's successful about your career and what's made all those projects that you've done successful,
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you will be able to repeat those things and be a much better engineer.
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So this is kind of like the reflections on your own career
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and kind of that framing is actually helpful in a more general sense than just the interview.
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Is that what you're saying?
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Yeah, totally.
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Exactly.
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So I think just as when you're going to write your performance review
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and you're thinking about what what made your project successful for
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that season i think that's going to enable you to to apply
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that going forward in the same way
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when you're preparing for a behavioral interview a lot of it is thinking about your past experience
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and thinking about what you've done and what you've accomplished
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and how you've been about accomplishing that and i think
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when you go and you do
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that reflection it really helps you understand like this is what this was the key
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this was the turning point this is where i really added value
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and then you can take that forward and apply
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that to the future project
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so i think that's number one in terms of why you should invest i think number two is
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that it really is an important part of the hiring process.
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It's important for the companies as they are evaluating you,
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especially for senior engineers, where every senior engineer starts to look and smell a little bit different than previous senior engineers.
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And so it gives us opportunity to really showcase what your specific skills and what you've brought to the table.
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And so when you're a hiring manager and you're sitting down thinking about why am I giving this behavioral interview,
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you're really assessing whether or not this candidate has in the past demonstrated behaviors
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or actions where they have been successful at building the kinds of projects
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that you as a hiring manager are hiring someone to do.
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And because past performance is a predictor of future results with people, like not necessarily with your stock portfolio,
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but with people, then when you assess the past performance of a person,
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you're really understanding whether or not they will employ those kinds of repeatable actions, repeatable behaviors in whatever new environment you put them in.
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I see tons of candidates who are getting down leveled from like staff to senior,
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senior to mid -level, a lot of times actually behavioral ends up showing up here.
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Is this something that you're seeing as well?
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Oh, huge.
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Well, as a hiring committee chair, what we would do is we would sit down with the packets, the entire interview packet from their,
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you know, phone screen all the way through the onsite, any kind of follow -ups, whatever.
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And then we would make a higher decision, but we'd also make a level decision.
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And certainly for level five, level six, so senior engineer, staff engineer above, the behavioral interviews start to become really, really important.
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When you're a staff level engineer, you're somebody who is
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working on projects that last a year or six months
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that last a very long time that involve a lot of different people.
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The actions that that staff person takes outside of their own code
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and their own technical contribution is really what makes or breaks the success of that person.
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So I would say
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that we would often see situations where the system design interview for a level five
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and the system design interview for a level six would kind of look the same, like, hey, we'll design a news feed you know okay
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it sort of looks the smells the same maybe it's a little bit more complete for the six
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or maybe maybe the six has some some some depth that they display in the system design
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the behavior will be totally different
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because the level five person would be working on a project with one or two other people of a couple of months,
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and they would be generally getting this direction from someone else.
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Whereas the level six is working across the company or across many different teams.
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They're the person who is setting direction, picking the metrics, partnering with an engineering manager.
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So that kind of big difference is really seen in the behavioral interview and not the other ones.
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Awesome.
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Well, I think you've sold me.
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Behavioral interview is very important.
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Tell me a little bit more about this evaluation process, like as a hiring committee,
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as an interviewer, what are people looking for in these behavioral interviews?
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Because if I can try to reflect a position that I feel like many of our audience has, it's that, well, I've got experience.
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I have some things.
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I'm not sure actually how to present what I have that lines up with what the interviewer is looking for.
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Can you explain a little bit more about how interviewers are evaluating behavioral interviews.
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Sure.
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Yeah.
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I have so much to say about this.
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I think one thing I would lead with is your stories are probably better than you think they are.
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Almost every person I've done over 200 in the last year, I think, coaching sessions with other, with, with candidates who are practicing their behaviorals.
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And I can say that it is almost always a case that your stories are more interesting than you think they are.
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So like, please don't undersell your own experience or think
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that you're not ready for that next level job or that next level company because of what you've done in the past.
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There's probably really great nuggets that you need to talk about.
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So let's talk about how a behavioral interviewer, someone on the hiring manager side would extract that signal.
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You got to think about what is their mindset?
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Their mindset is like, I have a team, I have a company, I have a position that I'm hiring for.
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That person, once they get into that position, are going to be doing some projects, they're going to be taking some action,
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working with the team and doing whatever they're doing as a software engineer.
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What does that person need to have?
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What are the actions they need to take?
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What are those qualities that that person needs to have in order to be successful,
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sometimes in my specific team or if they're at a bigger company and across the entire company?
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And so a lot of companies take a structured approach to this.
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In general, the idea is that this hiring manager
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or this interviewer has an idea of what's the most important things about a candidate.
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These are things like initiative, perseverance, conflict resolution, leadership, communication skills, those kinds of things big bucket
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and often those categories that those are at least for me
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when i was first getting started interviewing felt to me like a an unlaw
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that in general interviewers are trying to assess these signals
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and they're using those signals to make a hiring determination can you talk us through like what
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that dynamic looks like what are those signals
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and why do they use them yeah
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and actually there's even in a whole like a field of industrial psychology called selection science where people
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We get PhDs in assessing employees and understanding, like, what are the key elements of success for this company or this team or this role?
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But let's talk through, you know, a few of them, ones that are really common across lots of different companies.
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So one of them is initiative.
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So are you able to are you able to see a problem and then you go after some of that problem?
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Another one might be handling ambiguity.
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So if you are going to be able to look at a problem
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that is you don't know what the next step is
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and you go and you figure out what to do in that situation.
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Perseverance, you know, pushing through challenges and difficulties.
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Conflict resolution, right?
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So oftentimes we're working with other people and especially at higher levels,
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we may be required to make trade -offs or resolve conflicts that come along the way.
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I think that a lot of companies are really interested in people having a growth mindset.
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So are you able to take feedback well, provide feedback to others, and then respond actively to the feedback that you received?
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Communication skills.
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So are you able to communicate in a written way?
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Are you able to communicate in a verbal way?
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Are you able to know when to send a message or when to write a document, when to call a meeting?
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Those are all skills that a hiring manager is looking for.
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In general, is a hiring manager going yes or no on initiative?
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Or is there like a scale that they're thinking through?
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If they've thought about it in a structured way, they're certainly thinking about it as a scale.
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Because the initiative that, say, a new engineer might take and the initiative that a staff engineer might take are very different.
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So a new engineer, the initiative is like, I've run out of work.
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I need to go find work let me go talk to the senior engineer
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or the hiring manager and figure out what I'm supposed to do next.
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But for a staff engineer, this might be, I see this problem in a company that has been persistent for many years.
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I'm going to figure out a way to solve that problem.
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So the initiative is the same kind of action, but it's very different and looks very different.
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And this is part of how the hiring manager is deciding what level they want to hire this candidate at.
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It's based on at which scope actions are you taking?
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Okay.
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So it's kind of like they're looking at each of these signals according to the various levels of response,
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which is kind of a mid -level response might look different than a staff level response.
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Yeah, totally, totally.
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When hiring managers are looking at this, how much of this is a sniff test?
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How much of this is they like me?
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And, you know, they're generally looking out to see someone who's like them versus
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they're taking this objective Spock -like approach to try to figure out initiative levels and so on and so forth.
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Yes, right.
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So I think this is a really good point.
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And I do think, unfortunately, that likability does play a big role.
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I think we're as humans, we're naturally oriented to talk to someone and see, do we trust this person?
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You know, do we like them?
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Do they feel like us?
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And I think that these this approach where you structure
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or companies would structure what they're looking for is actually an attempt to get away from simple like,
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do I want to get a beer with this candidate?
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Right.
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Which is a very bad way to hire people.
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And I think that, but at the same time, as a candidate, I think you,
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especially in the beginning part of the interview where you're establishing rapport
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and you're talking about yourself and you're talking about maybe a favorite project, so be impactful that you've done.
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I think how you engage with the interviewer and whether or not you come across as confident, whether or not you come across as relaxed,
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I do think those things make a difference and probably more of a difference than most hiring managers would.
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Interesting.
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Yeah, it does feel like there is maybe a bit of a standard that we'd all like to aspire to,
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which is this unbiased, objective process where we find the best talent, and then the reality on the ground, which is interviewers are humans,
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they kind of see themselves in other people, and that impacts their subjective assessments of their capabilities.
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Yeah, for sure.
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I mean, these structured interviewing approaches where you identify what's important in candidates
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and then you assess them based on those signal areas
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that we're talking about have been proven scientifically via psychology studies to reduce bias.
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And so this is why you see the best run companies, the largest companies employing this kind of structured approach.
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You can oftentimes see this when you're a candidate, when you're listening to people's questions,
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you can see them move from sort of one signal area to another,
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or the question that they ask fits in with a totally different sort of part aspect of working.
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And honestly, I think that those systems are really good.
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I think they do at times cause interviewers to jump around instead of having a conversation and keeping the candidate at ease.
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They can be like, okay, we're done with the conflict resolution.
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Now on to growth.
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You know, I think that
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that kind of structured approach with an interviewer who is not skilled and who's not good at helping the candidate,
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you know, feel at ease can feel a little bit, you know, block, you know, jerky to the candidate.
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Yeah.
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Well, so this is a helpful foundation.
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So you've got these signals that these interviewers are looking for, both to make a leveling determination and to decide whether you're going to be hired.
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Now, candidates come in, obviously, with their own experience.
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The real question, I think, for most people is, all right, how do I present my experience, the projects that I've worked on,
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the things that I care about in the way
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that best gives the interviewer what they need in order to make a good decision?
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Do you have some suggestions on how candidates can support this?
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And I would say first, really understanding you and understanding what you've accomplished in your career.
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And I think that this is where something like a brag document
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or a yay me document that you may
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or may not be keeping along the way during your career can be really valuable.
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So spending time as a behavioral interview candidate, thinking through what are the projects that I've accomplished?
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What am I really proud of?
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You know, what do I feel like I would I would love to tell a hiring manager?
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And then being able to use some list of signal areas or maybe even company values, every company has some sense of what's important to them.
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And then aligning those kinds of projects to those company values becomes, I think, the first step beyond trying to jump into specifically,
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you know, how do you respond to questions or what do you say?
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I think that's actually a pretty interesting place to start, because this brag document comes unnaturally for a number of candidates.
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Like, I certainly talk with a bunch of engineers who say, I haven't done anything technically interesting.
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I've never built something at scale.
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I've never led a team before.
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How can I possibly, you know, present myself in these settings?
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What should people like that do?
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How should they reframe or think about how they set up
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that brag document or how they can start to think about how they form these stories that they're going to present?
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Yeah, great question.
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I mean, I think that if you are an engineer in a work setting right now,
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I think you can start by journaling once a week or once a month and thinking about what have I accomplished?
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What are the tasks that I've done?
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What are the projects that I've done?
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I think this gives you this record, which will not only help you in behavioral interviews, but also help you writing your resume, et cetera.
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If you are working in a place that has any kind of formal performance reviews, most big companies have formal performance reviews.
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Those are great resources to see what you have done in the past.
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And I would really encourage folks who are still in those jobs to get
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that information out of the HR system
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and put it someplace where you can keep it in case you're no longer working in that place.
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But if you're not in this situation and you need to come up with these ideas, I think asking yourself some questions, right?
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So things that, where did you make the biggest user impact, right?
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What did you build?
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What have you built?
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What have you worked on?
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Where's a place where you've really moved some measurable metric, whether that's engagement time or revenue
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or costs, performance? like these places where there's some uh measurable impact tend to be the places where uh
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that turn into really good stories i think
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that uh you can look at projects that took a long time
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so like what what did you work on for a really long time
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and now sometimes there's a bad reason why you worked on it for a long time
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but most of the time it's because it's complicated and difficult
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and there was a lot of interesting twists and turns along the way
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and those become really interesting projects to talk about that's a good point yeah
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i think at least from my side there is this benefit to separating out the objective what happened from the
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do I think that this is impressive or not?
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A lot of candidates try to merge those two.
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And as a result, they stumble over themselves trying to come up with stories,
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but they find it actually pretty easy to list all those things that they actually did.
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And we can go and rank those and we can decide what's going to be most important.
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So I love the idea of actually just asking yourself questions about what happened before you go
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and kind of try to judge what is most appropriate to bring up.
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And you talk about picking projects to talk about.
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And so one of the worksheets
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that I provide on the uh on the uh substack uh
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be able to rate your projects by personal in interaction like personal involvement
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sometimes you're sort of casually involved in a really interesting project maybe that's not the best project to talk about
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and there's one uh axis of business impact
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so like how much of a difference did this project make
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and then um you know the other access is uh in terms of scope
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so like how large your project this was sometimes you know one line can make
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you are heavily invested in making a one -line change
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which met a really big business impact
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but wouldn't necessarily be the best project to talk about
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because it doesn't display a lot of great behaviors or repeatable actions
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that a hiring manager might be interested in so
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if you can categorize the projects
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that you worked on along those three axes you can figure out
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which ones are the most interesting ones to talk about
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and specifically you can get to this like favorite project
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or oftentimes the second question in the interview is talking about something you did or an impactful project or whatever.
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And picking that one can be difficult for people.
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And I think using those three axes can help them choose the right one.
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Perfect.
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Yes.
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I think after you've laid this groundwork, you know, in terms of understanding what you have done,
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I do think it's helpful for you to start journaling about and sort of preparing a small response, right?
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Like a draft response of what you might say.
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And this is where these structures that you may or may not heard about in the past come in really helpful.
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So there's one that's very, very popular.
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It's called star, situation, task, action, result.
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And so the idea is that if you respond to someone, tell them about the situation, then you tell them about the tasks that you had,
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then you tell them about the actions that you took, then you told them about what happened in the end,
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this becomes a natural sort of story flow and one that gives people up front some context to understand what
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you did and what you produced, where you are demonstrating these repeatable actions that can be replicated on the hiring manager's team.
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And then sort of ending it with some business, what's the business impact or what's the bang that we got out of this project?
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And that's a really natural approach to telling a story.
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I think that this leaves out a couple of really important parts.
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I think that, especially for senior engineers,
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the idea that the candidate can reflect back on their project and give me some kind of insight into what they learned,
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what they would take away to the next project, or even just talking to me about how they thought the project went can be really valuable
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and a way to establish themselves.
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A person who has acquired by this knowledge over time.
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I prefer this format called CARL, which is context, action, result, learnings.
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And this also solves another common problem where people spend too much time on the setup.
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They say, I'm talking about the situation and that takes a while.
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And I'm going to talk about the tasks that I did.
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And really that's just context kind of all wrapped up in one thing.
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And so I think it's more helpful for people who are just getting started to think about context, action, result, learnings.
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And then that's the way that you frame the response for most stories that you're being asked.
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And to be clear, these are the ones where someone asks you a question like, tell me about a time when you did blah, right?
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I think that fits really well into that framework.
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Got it.
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So Carl, it sounds like the main thing is grouping together some of the situation, task, and then this addition of the L.
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What kind of learnings would you expect from a candidate?
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What kind of reflections are you looking for here?
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Yeah, really good question.
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So this is another way where hiring managers are looking to understand your level
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and your scope is by how deep of insights that you can provide.
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So a junior engineer might provide insights like, well, you know, maybe I should have talked to the designer before I built this feature.
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And then that would have helped me avoid building this thing which didn't, you know, building the thing which the designer didn't like, right?
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Sometimes that can be something that a junior engineer might say, hey, I think whenever you have a mistake inside of a project,
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it's okay to share a mistake, especially when you share that you learned from it.
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And then you share that, oh, and the next time i made sure
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that i talked to the the designer in advance so i think
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that kind of learning where you're reflecting on mistakes
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that you made is a really really common one
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i think another one might be uh reflecting for more senior
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engineers might be reflecting more on um how they got in
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that situation in the first place right sometimes the story is about like oh
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we have this performance problem a reliability problem inside of the code base
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and then we did xyz to fix it
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and sometimes i think it's helpful for me to know
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you know okay well we wouldn't have been in this situation
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if we had had changed this culture or adjusted this metric
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or if we had done something differently and i think
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that um the sometimes the learning can even be a forward -looking learning
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so something like well uh we did that we shipped this feature
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but then the next step we noticed xyz
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and then we needed to go and
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and make these changes to the future in the future right so that kind of
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forward -looking reflection can also be something that fits in the learning category.
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That's super helpful.
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I love the emphasis on kind of insight and wisdom
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because those are theoretically harder earned and as a result can correlate more strongly with experience.
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I think for some candidates, this learning gets a bit uncomfortable because it kind of implies in some ways a mistake or weakness.
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It's like, I didn't get this to the first time.
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How do you feel about how candidates can kind of reveal mistakes or things that they would do differently.
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What's the right way to approach this in an interview setting?
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Yeah, it's really interesting.
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And I think this is where having an interview coach is really helpful because sometimes when you reveal certain weaknesses, an experienced interview might think,
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well, you should have known that.
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And then there are certain weaknesses.
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Like, for example, like, well, you know what?
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I just shipped this feature to 100 % without running any kind of,
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you know, a graduated experiment or 1 % rollout or canary or anything like that.
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And then we ended up with this bug.
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And then you tell me this story about how you solved the bug.
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I think that you have established yourself as someone who is not super senior because you didn't know this, right?
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I think as a junior candidate, maybe this is okay, especially if you follow this up with,
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hey, like I learned this thing and then in the future projects, I didn't do that.
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So I think that some of this depends on the kind of weakness or the depth of the weakness that you're revealing.
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However, I will say that revealing a weakness and then revealing
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that you learn from it is is a really great signal i love to see this in fact
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if someone does not admit to me any weaknesses
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or does not tell me about any times when they made mistakes
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or they can't think of any way
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that this project could have been better
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this is like the the you know uh fairy tale ending right to the project
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now i don't believe you right now i have like some trust concerns right where i'm not sure
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that you're being totally honest with me so i think that sharing weaknesses sharing places where the project didn't go as expected,
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that is a signal of your ability to reflect and your ability to grow.
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I think it just depends a little bit on which weakness you're sharing.
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And I think this is where having a more experienced friend or mock interview can really be helpful.
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Yeah, love it.
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Yeah, vulnerability and authenticity, I think are actually really important techniques to employ.
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As an interviewer, when it sounds like a sales pitch or some sort of manufactured story, I've got two options.
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Either A, I go and I disbelieve it.
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This isn't a story that I'm going to take at face value.
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Or B, I'm going to dig in really deep.
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I'm going to be very critical to make sure I'm actually getting the truth.
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And in both cases, the candidate probably doesn't want that response.
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And so in a lot of cases, actually being truthful and honest
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and coming across as authentic can really help to avoid kind of these pathological behaviors from interviewers or worst case,
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the interviewer just nixing you because they don't believe you.
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So I love the the learning aspect that you've introduced here.
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I think this is actually probably a good segue.
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Like, I want to make this as practical as possible for our audience.
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And I'd love to talk about some of the things
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that you see in practice from candidates that might be red flags or potholes.
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Like, where would you say are the common categories of candidates screwing up?
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And maybe we can go into a little bit of what
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that category is and then like what people should be doing instead?
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Yeah, sure.
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So I think they're really clear ones.
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And the number one, one I would say is, is not providing enough clear repeatable actions that you did.
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So this comes up a lot with junior engineers.
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So they tell me like, oh, we have this feature, they spent a lot of time setting it up,
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then they tell me we built it and we shipped it, right.
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And it's like all the interesting parts are in the part that you kind of yada, yada, yada, which is this,
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like, what are the repeatable actions?
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Like, what are the things that you did?
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That's the biggest one.
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I think the number two one would probably be not providing the right level of detail.
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So either most of the time it's providing too much context.
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So spending too much time before you get to the actions that you took.
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A lot of people think that the hiring manager needs a lot of context in order to understand a project.
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However, most projects fit within some kind of archetype like, oh, hey, you know, business feature is needed by a customer.
408
We're going to build it.
409
We're like performance or reliability challenge or whatever it is, or even even conflicts oftentimes fit into these kind of architects like conflict archetypes,
410
conflict with an architect, conflict with a manager, conflict with a coworker over some technical choice.
411
And the manager has a general understanding of how that system works, how that problem or how that project might go down.
412
And so providing a ton of context isn't really valuable for the hiring manager.
413
So I think any context that you're adding is just delaying the signal that I'm acquiring, which is what did you do in the situation?
414
And so it is a fine art to figure out, okay, how much context is required for the hiring manager to believe
415
that this is an important thing to do or that I'm making the right choices as I'm making these actions.
416
But I think that this is where also writing things down in advance and thinking about them, getting some help from AI,
417
getting some help from a mock interviewer can be really helpful in you honing how much context to apply.
418
Yeah, this is a really interesting one because I think it's hard to evaluate independently unless you have some experience.
419
But in general, I think people underestimate how much pattern matching happens in a behavioral interview like you said, there's this association to archetypes.
420
And now that I've established that this is a story about this archetype,
421
I kind of know what are the interesting parts that I want you to go into those.
422
Whereas if you're spending a lot of time giving me technical jargon about, you know, some specific things, A, I probably don't understand it.
423
And B, I'm not sure it's very important.
424
But I think for many candidates, they interpret this feedback as saying,
425
I need to explain all of the context of my project like I'm like the interviewer's five.
426
I need to simplify things so dramatically that I'm spoon feeding them.
427
I don't think this is the right approach, but I'd love to get your take on this.
428
There's kind of two directions to like sufficient context and one of them seems to assume kind of negatively on the interviewer.
429
Yeah, yeah.
430
I mean, I would definitely not try to explain this to you.
431
Like if this person that you're talking to,
432
especially at large company is going to be probably two or three levels above the level that you are being hired for.
433
And so they have probably seen, you know, potentially twice as much or three times as much,
434
many little versions of the software development lifecycle than possibly you have.
435
And so I think that this idea that you have to explain to them like they're five is not helpful.
436
I think that also the hiring manager
437
or the interviewer is very likely to just stop you
438
and ask for more context if they need it i think
439
that is something that you can rely on um and i wouldn't i wouldn't try to
440
provide too much
441
and give them too much of a crutch
442
i would try to get as fast as you can to the actions
443
that you're taking in fact some people would recommend that you
444
that you front load it depending on the question
445
and say something like well you know in this project
446
i did these three things let me tell you a little bit about the like context
447
and setup for for that project i mean
448
that that's sort of front loading what you want the person to take away from uh from the response Love it.
449
And I love being able to rely on your interviewer to ask additional questions.
450
You as a candidate don't necessarily need to tell them absolutely everything.
451
You can leave some earmarks and then let them dig in where they see necessary.
452
I stopped you short.
453
You were going through some really good red flags and potholes there.
454
Are there other ones that come to top of mind?
455
We were talking earlier about making a good first impression.
456
And I think that there are two questions that are really, really common, and maybe three questions really common,
457
two which happen typically the very first part of the interview.
458
And that's, tell me about yourself and tell me about your favorite project or most impactful project or whatever, however it's phrased.
459
And I think with these two questions, you really have the opportunity to set the stage for the interview
460
you are this is the first thing you're saying
461
so the interviewer is likely uh the most attentive
462
that they're going to be this is
463
when they're establishing your your uh first impression
464
they will probably remember what you say in the very beginning minute 34 like i don't know maybe maybe
465
they remember maybe they don't but that first five ten minutes is is something
466
that they will really latch on to and
467
so for you to be able to set the stage of who you are describing who you are
468
and then talking about a project which is really matches the level
469
that you're you're applying for and demonstrates a lot of strong behaviors that you had in that project, that to me is critical.
470
And after that, it's sort of like you're downhill.
471
The interviewer might be assessing your other axes and sort of figuring out if you're right for the role,
472
but they probably made their decision in that first 5, 10 minutes based on what you're saying.
473
So that one is a huge one.
474
That's a good point.
475
I think especially for staff -level engineers, managers, that Tell Me About Yourself project
476
or question will give you a pretty good indication as to
477
whether this person has a handle on where their career is going.
478
You know, you talk with candidates who are really strong.
479
They know exactly what they do best
480
and they know exactly how it adds value to the business and they're able to tie those two together.
481
For candidates who come in and it's not really clear where they're going and they haven't figured it out yet,
482
it's harder to see them being effective and kind of employing that.
483
And so, especially at those more senior levels, I think you're totally onto something with how you can set that up.
484
What are other things that people should keep in mind for making that first impression?
485
There's a lot of ways I can go and tell me about myself.
486
Like what's a framework for me thinking about the response here?
487
So I like a three -part framework.
488
And the first one is just a brief description of yourself,
489
kind of like put yourself into some bucket inside the person's mind with a personal twist on the end.
490
So this is like, hi, my name is Austin.
491
I'm a senior engineer with five years experience.
492
I spend most time on the back end and I'm really passionate about performance, right?
493
So I think that this gives me some kind of general sense of, you know, who this person is, right? as an interviewer.
494
And it also gives me something personal about them that maybe I want to look for or ask about later.
495
So that's the first part.
496
The second part is a list of accomplishments.
497
So this is where you talk about, does the candidate really understand what they've accomplished and how they've gone about adding value?
498
So really, I want to see a list of things that you've done that has brought about business value.
499
So me as a hiring manager, I'm hiring you to solve some business problem in my organization.
500
I want to get real world impact from the code
501
that you're producing and so i want to see
502
that you have accomplished real -world impact in past roles
503
this could be something like you know my previous role took
504
on this you know uh like end -to -end loading problem where we reduced uh
505
you know reduced loading time by 50 right would this really help the users experience a better product right
506
so you're giving me this list of things which is kind of like bullets off your resume in a sense, right?
507
I definitely do not want a history lesson.
508
So sometimes people will give me this thing where they're like, I first started as an intern and then,
509
you know, then I went to this company and then I went to this company.
510
And I think that that gets old really, really fast and adds no value about you.
511
Like I'm not understanding, I'm not taking away anything as a, as an interviewer.
512
And you can imagine how like crazy this might be from a 20 or 30 year career, right?
513
That gets pretty intense.
514
So that's the middle part.
515
And then this third part is, it's oftentimes people will just kind of peter out after this.
516
So sometimes we'll get those two things and then they kind of like, um, uh, you know, and they sort of stop.
517
And I think this is where if you end really strongly by passing the ball back to the interviewer and you,
518
you say some forward -looking statement about how you, what you want to get out of your next role.
519
You might say something like, I'm going to be looking for an opportunity to lead people in my next role,
520
because I think that's where I want to take my career in the future.
521
Something like that.
522
Ideally, this is about the role itself.
523
Ideally, there's something about the company or about the role that, that, uh, the hiring manager is hiring for something about,
524
oh, I like this team i like this product like this company
525
because of some reason um to me
526
that's a really easy way to pass the ball back to the to the interviewer
527
and and you're telling about yourself
528
and this whole thing should be like two two minutes
529
it should be pretty quick right um this is something that's certainly worth practicing uh
530
if you read it that's probably not going to have a great impression on the person
531
and and they can tell that you're reading it um
532
but writing it down
533
and practicing it you're going to give it a lot
534
you're going to give it the behavioral interview you're going to give it to a hiring manager during team selection.
535
You could give it to a recruiter.
536
There's a lot of places where you could give this kind of pitch.
537
It could be really worth your time.
538
That's great.
539
Yeah.
540
I think as a hiring manager, I'm licking my chops if somebody tells me about experience that they've done that's relevant to my team.
541
And they tell me that the challenges that they want to solve are actually the challenges that my team solves.
542
And I'm going, I can already see you on my team.
543
Let me figure out what evidence I need to get in order to make it happen.
544
I think that's the best impression you can leave in these early stages.
545
Yeah.
546
Great way to frame it.
547
Let's let's talk a little bit about that preparation and kind of you mentioned, obviously, you don't want to just be reading off a script.
548
It doesn't sound very contemporaneous, but I think there's a lot of our audience who naturally are more introverted.
549
They're not public speakers.
550
They actually, you know, they're going to be super nervous like anyone would in an interview setting.
551
What kind of things should they do in order to make sure
552
that they can kind of present the best version of their experience?
553
Yeah, a lot of aspects there.
554
I think a lot of people are going to go after preparing for behavioral interviews in a similar way
555
that they might prepare for a coding interview.
556
So I'm going to go find a list of problems on the Internet and then questions on the Internet.
557
And I'm going to like practice those responses.
558
And I think that that has limited value to be to be honest.
559
So I think it's much more important, like we talked about, to understand what value you have added to organizations in the past.
560
So spend your time at first understanding what projects you've accomplished, aligning those projects to common signal areas,
561
especially if the company that you're applying for has any kind of published values.
562
So Amazon has their whatever, like 16 leadership principles and, you know, has their values.
563
And a lot of companies have published values, even smaller ones.
564
So making sure that you've aligned those in advance
565
and you have some sort of collection of stories that you have spent a little bit of time preparing this
566
Carl format or star format or whatever you choose so that you have some idea of how to present these things.
567
I think that's the first step.
568
Then I know I said earlier that you shouldn't prepare for specific questions, but I think that it is worth preparing for three specific questions.
569
So one of them is tell me about yourself, like we talked about earlier.
570
The next one is to make sure that you have a really solid story about your favorite project.
571
And this can be expanding on that
572
Carl format so that you can spend five, even seven minutes if you're a good speaker and if you're organized in what you're communicating.
573
And the final question is a conflict story.
574
I mean, I can say, you know, four nines, whatever, five nines, maybe.
575
You're likely to get some question about a time
576
when you resolve a conflict in a behavioral interview
577
and having some well -prepared and well -thought -out response to that really makes sense.
578
I would say that you've talked about how maybe the candidate is not a trained speaker
579
and how do you prepare for them, practice for that.
580
So I do think this is something that comes with time and something that comes with practice.
581
And I think the best way to do this is actually to go back and do what I said,
582
don't do the beginning, get a list of stories and then see if you can respond to them on a video.
583
So give yourself a little time pressure, right?
584
Where you're recording yourself and practice answering the question using that, that Carl format that, uh, that we talked about earlier,
585
and it probably won't be that great in the beginning.
586
And that's okay.
587
Right.
588
I think that's okay.
589
I think the idea here is that as you practice this kind of extemporaneous speaking, you'll get, you'll get better and better at it.
590
I would say after that, getting a friend, right, getting either getting a mock interview from an experienced hiring manager, that's probably the best way.
591
But then also, even a friend could be somebody who give you feedback on how you're communicating,
592
whether you're clear and can ask you some some simple follow up questions that can be really valuable, too.
593
awesome
594
but it seems like you gave us a lot
595
there it sounds like for the kind of early stage
596
i'll go at the first stage
597
it seems like you basically just need to assemble some stories kind of rank them flesh them out
598
so that way you know what you're going to be talking about
599
but your recommendation here is don't prepare for specific questions prepare for categories
600
that are going to be useful in a broad variety of questions
601
We'll be right back.
602
It sounds like you've got some worksheets on your sub stack that might be useful for this.
603
But generally speaking, I think that level of detail, a lot of candidates aren't doing, and it would definitely improve.
604
It sounds like you would also recommend preparing some responses for a couple common questions or three common questions.
605
And then this final idea of trying to answer some simulated questions in front of a camera
606
or ideally in a mock interview setting, plug for Hello Interview, if you guys would like to check it out,
607
is a really great way to either self -critique or get your own feedback.
608
I do find also that sometimes candidates are helped by creating a few flashcards with those questions, not as a means of preparing,
609
but as a way of kind of randomizing
610
and seeing whether they can think on their feet and apply the stories that they've already created.
611
Many candidates will be a little bit startled by the fact that they've got a question that they weren't anticipating, which they should very much expect.
612
But if they can practice that, it reduces the level of anxiety that comes into that interview setting.
613
If you know that you're going to be getting things of the form that you've seen before, then you're much more likely to succeed.
614
Yeah.
615
I mean, and I would just add that briefly.
616
I think if you, since so many interviews nowadays are remote, then if you did make this list of projects and you did create these axes,
617
like we talked about signal areas, like the worksheet that I talked about,
618
then you can sort of quickly consume the question that the interviewer is asking you and say, oh, it's a question about, you know, growth, right?
619
Let me look down and see, oh, that's the story that I want to choose.
620
Because sometimes, like you said, there is a sense of being nervous and how do I remember all the things, right?
621
So if you have it in front of you categorized, it's going to be really, you know, really valuable.
622
I think that
623
one part of the interview process
624
that people frequently underprepare for is the kind of end of the interview where the interviewer asks you, what questions do you have?
625
And I would assess candidates based on what they ask me.
626
So if they ask me, tell me about a day in the life of an engineer or something like that.
627
I think this is just not super valuable, right?
628
Most companies, the day of life, it kind of looks the same, right?
629
Get up, work on stuff, go to a meeting, go home, right?
630
So it's not like that's a super insightful question.
631
I appreciated times when candidates ask me something about the product direction
632
that my team is taking or about the technology choices my team's having.
633
Or if you are interviewing with a hiring manager, somebody that you know you're going to directly report to,
634
then I really appreciated candidates who asked me questions about my own management style.
635
How have I helped people grow?
636
What have been the most important parts of making engineers successful?
637
And how have I mentored engineers along the way?
638
So those kinds of questions can reflect back to me how much thinking you've done about the company and about the role.
639
That's a great point.
640
Especially, I think a lot of people are thinking also about Team Match, which is kind of a recent invention.
641
Google's been doing this for a while.
642
Meta started doing this.
643
It used to be part of the bootcamp process.
644
But functionally, these are meetings that you have with a hiring manager.
645
They're technically not an interview, but the reality for most people is they are an interview.
646
And in those cases, the questions that you ask are really indicative and very much color the conversation with the hiring manager.
647
And so questions about leadership style and team dynamics are fantastic.
648
But also if you can do even a shallow amount of research about the team
649
or the space that they're operating in and ask them questions about directions or strategy or where things are going,
650
there's a good chance that you're going to be completely off base just
651
because nobody without extensive experience is going to ask a really good question.
652
But the signal there that you put in the effort
653
and then you actually considered it for a bit is actually very powerful for a hiring manager.
654
And immediately they see you as someone who's kind of on their team, which is an impression that I think is very valuable and cultivating.
655
I would say this team match thing, it is probably 50 -50 whether or not the hiring manager expects you to drive the interview.
656
So I think you could be in a situation where you're expected to have question after question.
657
And so preparing more than just one
658
or two for the last five minutes of the interview is really important for that team match phase.
659
Very, very useful.
660
Austin, this has been tremendously valuable.
661
I've certainly learned a lot and I hope everyone has in the chat.
662
If you all wanna leave any comments with questions, I will definitely be there to answer.
663
I hope Austin will be able to give us a little bit of time as well.
664
I would encourage you guys to check out his sub stack.
665
He's got plenty of interesting resources there.
666
If you're interested in working with a coach who's actually done behavioral interviews
667
and can give you some of the feedback that we've talked about on Hello Interview, we've got resources there.
668
And we also have an AI tool we call
669
Story Builder, which asks you socratic questions about your experience to try to build some of those base anecdotes
670
that Austin's been talking about that'll be useful for some of those subsequent stages of preparation.
671
So behavioral interview, not something to be taken lightly.
672
Very important, especially for those more senior roles and interns for what it's worth.
673
This seems to be a thread that we didn't get a chance to get into.
674
But Austin, really appreciate your time.
675
Yeah, thanks, Evan.
676
Appreciate it.
677
Thanks for having me.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Behavioral Interview Discussion with Ex-Meta Hiring Committee Member”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: interview, project, candidate, hiring. This video has 677 sentences and 8942 words to shadow. The speech runs for 40:09. The speaker talks fast, about 223 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 86% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| hire verb | /ˈhaɪɹ/ | To obtain the services of in return for fixed payment. |
| interviewer noun | /ˈɪntɚvjuɚ/ | One who interviews. |
| behavioral adjective | /bɪˈheɪvjəɹəl/ | Of or relating to behavior. |
| helpful adjective | /ˈhɛlp.fl̩/ | Furnishing help; giving aid; useful. |
| weakness noun | /ˈwik.nɪs/ | The condition of being weak. |
| initiative noun | /ɪˈnɪʃ.ə.tɪv/ | A beginning; a first move. |
| reflect verb | /ɹɪˈflɛkt/ | To bend back (light, etc.) from a surface. |
| feedback noun | /ˈfiːdˌbæk/ | Critical assessment of a process or activity or of their results. |
| assess verb | /əˈsɛs/ | To determine, estimate or judge the value of; to evaluate; to estimate. |
| accomplish verb | /əˈkɑm.plɪʃ/ | To finish successfully. |
| solve verb | /sɒlv/ | To find an answer or solution to a problem or question; to work out. |
| impression noun | /ɪmˈpɹɛʃn̩/ | The indentation or depression made by the pressure of one object on or into another. |
| format noun | /ˈfɔːɹ.mæt/ | The layout of a publication or document. |
| reveal verb | /ɹɪˈviːl/ | To uncover; to show and display that which was hidden. |
| communicate verb | /kəˈmjuːnɪkeɪt/ | To impart or transmit (information or knowledge) to someone; to make known, to tell. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. |
| come across verb | To change sides; to cross over to work for the opposition. |
| check out verb | To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.). |
| come up with verb | To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it. |
| get out of verb | To leave, exit or escape from; to become free of. |
| think through verb | To fully consider, so as to understand all the consequences of. |
| bring up verb | To mention. |
| come along verb | To accompany. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Is that what you're saying?
- Is this something that you're seeing as well?
- You got to think about what is their mindset?
- What are the tasks that I've done?
- What are the projects that I've done?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | Google's been doing · Austin's been talking |
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | if you guys would like |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | haven't gone · haven't looked · you've done |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is underprepared · is really seen · may be required |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 215 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, I'm, they're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: thread /ˈθɹɛd/, authentic /ɔˈθɛn.tɪk/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: initiative /ɪˈnɪʃ.ə.tɪv/, accomplish /əˈkɑm.plɪʃ/, impression /ɪmˈpɹɛʃn̩/, reflection /ɹɪˈflɛkʃən/, establish /ɪˈstæb.lɪʃ/
- Long words — get the stress right: behavioral /bɪˈheɪvjəɹəl/, initiative /ɪˈnɪʃ.ə.tɪv/, communicate /kəˈmjuːnɪkeɪt/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, preparation /ˌpɹɛpəˈɹeɪʃ(ə)n/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like hire, interviewer, behavioral.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.