Prepare for behavioral interviews: STAR format, story bank, leadership principles, common questions, and how to tailor stories to seniority. Use when preparing for behavioral interviews.
Company, role, or specific question to prepare: $ARGUMENTS
Situation: 2-3 sentences — context, stakes, why it mattered
Task: Your role and responsibility in the situation
Action: 3-5 specific actions YOU took (not "we")
Result: Quantified outcomes + what you learned
Lesson: What you'd do differently / what it taught you
Target length: 2-3 minutes per story
Practice: Record yourself, listen back
Prepare one story per category — they can overlap with different emphasis:
1. CONFLICT / DISAGREEMENT
"Tell me about a time you disagreed with a decision"
"How do you handle conflict with a teammate or manager?"
2. FAILURE / MISTAKE
"Tell me about a time you failed"
"Biggest mistake you've made"
3. LEADERSHIP UNDER AMBIGUITY
"Tell me about a time you led a project with unclear requirements"
"How do you handle projects where the scope keeps changing?"
4. IMPACT / OWNERSHIP
"Tell me about something you're most proud of building"
"What's the most impactful thing you've shipped?"
5. COLLABORATION
"Tell me about a time you worked cross-functionally"
"How do you work with product/design/data science?"
6. TECHNICAL DECISION
"Walk me through a hard technical decision you made"
"Tell me about a time you had to make a decision with incomplete information"
7. FEEDBACK / GROWTH
"Tell me about a time you received difficult feedback"
"How do you give feedback to someone more senior than you?"
8. MENTORSHIP / HELPING OTHERS
"Tell me about a time you helped a teammate grow"
"How do you approach mentoring junior engineers?"
L3 (Junior SWE):
Focus on: learning quickly, technical execution, asking for help
Stories: implemented feature, debugged hard bug, onboarded to codebase
Don't: overstate leadership scope
L4 (Mid-level SWE):
Focus on: driving a feature end-to-end, technical quality, collaboration
Stories: owned a feature from design to launch, found and fixed architectural issue
L5 (Senior SWE):
Focus on: influencing team decisions, cross-team impact, mentoring, ambiguity
Stories: defined technical direction for a quarter, led cross-team initiative
L6+ (Staff/Principal):
Focus on: org-wide impact, driving alignment, making others more productive
Stories: architected platform others build on, changed engineering culture
Customer Obsession: "Who was the customer and how did you put them first?"
Bias for Action: "What did you do when you didn't have full information?"
Dive Deep: "Tell me a technical story with specific numbers"
Invent and Simplify: "How did you find a simpler solution to a complex problem?"
Earn Trust: "How did you rebuild trust after a mistake?"
Deliver Results: "What was the outcome? How did you ensure it?"
Disagree and Commit: "Tell me about a time you pushed back, and one where you committed despite disagreement"
Googleyness focus areas:
- Comfortable with ambiguity
- Team-first attitude
- Proactively helps others
- Honest and transparent
- Enjoys intellectual challenge
Questions:
"Tell me about a time you did something for the team that wasn't in your job description"
"How do you handle working with someone whose work style is very different from yours?"
CONFLICT story template:
"This was [role] on [team] in [year].
I disagreed with [what] because [your technical/business reasoning].
I first [tried to understand their perspective by...].
I then [shared my concern via...], specifically by [concrete action].
We resolved it by [outcome — ideally compromise or data-driven decision].
The result was [what happened].
I learned [lesson about communication/technical decision-making]."
FAILURE story template:
"[What happened] — I [specific mistake].
The impact was [concrete: P1 incident, delayed launch, cost X].
I [owned it by: immediate actions — told manager, drafted postmortem, fixed issue].
I [systematic fix: process or code change to prevent recurrence].
Since then [evidence it didn't happen again / improved the team].
What I'd do differently: [genuine reflection]."
1. Saying "we" instead of "I" — interviewer can't tell your contribution
2. No measurable outcome — "it went well" is not an answer
3. Stories with no conflict/challenge — pick genuinely hard situations
4. Overly positive spin on failures — don't hide the mistake, own it
5. Too long — if you're over 4 minutes, tighten it
6. Not answering the actual question — answer directly, then story
7. Badmouthing former colleagues — never, even if they were awful