Behavioral Questions
Behavioral questions ask about specific moments in your past so the interviewer can predict your behavior in similar future moments. The strongest answers use the STAR framework: Situation, Task, Action, Result — and keep "Action" at roughly 60% of the answer's length. That is the only part the interviewer is actually evaluating.
Common stems include: "Tell me about a time you disagreed with a colleague", "Describe a project that failed and what you did", and "Walk me through a moment you had to make a decision with incomplete information". Prepare three flexible stories that you can route into any of these prompts — each story should have conflict, your specific decision, the outcome, and the lesson.
Situational Questions
Situational questions are hypothetical — "what would you do if…" — and they measure your reasoning, not your past. The trap is jumping to a solution. Strong candidates first restate the constraint, surface what they would need to learn before deciding, and only then propose a path. This signals operational maturity.
Example: "What would you do if your top engineer wanted to resign two weeks before launch?" A weak answer offers a retention bonus. A strong answer first asks: is the resignation negotiable, or are they leaving for personal reasons; how dependent is the launch on this person specifically; what does the calendar look like if we slip a week. The decision flows from those answers, not from a reflex.
Technical Questions
Technical interviews increasingly mix "do" questions with "explain" questions. The "do" questions look like coding or system design. The "explain" questions ask you to defend a choice you've already made on your resume — "you mentioned async batching cut p99 by 73%; walk me through the decision."
Prepare for the "explain" half explicitly. For every bullet on your resume that involves a technical decision, write three sentences: what you considered, what you chose, why the alternative would have been worse. This is also the highest-yield resume audit you can do before any interview — because if you cannot defend a bullet in three sentences, it does not belong on the resume.
Questions to ask the interviewer
- What does success in this role look like at the 90-day mark?
- What is the team's biggest open question this quarter?
- What is one thing about working here that surprised you when you joined?
- How are decisions usually made when the team disagrees?
- What does the path from this role to the next look like?