How to Master Behavioral Interviews 📞
A full guide by Austen McDonald, ex Hiring Committee Chair at Meta
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Today’s piece is from Austen McDonald, a former Senior Engineering Manager and Hiring Committee Chair at Meta and now the author of the Mastering the Behavioral Interview newsletter. With over 1,000 big tech interviews conducted and 200+ behavioral interview mentees, he’s truly earned his LinkedIn tagline: “Behavioral Interview Enthusiast”
For today, Austen has put together an incredible guide on mastering behavioral interviews, which are more important than ever in the age of AI coding. If you’re interviewing now, or even if you’re not, learning about how best to prepare for them will help you improve as an engineer and land your next role.
Interviewing is like dating.
Two people, intrigued by each other, rendezvous repeatedly to explore the possibilities. Questions and answers are exchanged, and much is read between the lines. Body language is analyzed. Nerves are managed. Ultimately, there's a decision. It's not always mutual.
Ok so this metaphor is stretched for coding and system design, but for behavioral interviews—the one with the hiring manager conversation—it’s pretty accurate.
And just like dating, the goal isn't to pretend to be someone you're not, but to present your authentic self in the most compelling way possible. Most engineers spend weeks perfecting their algorithm and data structure skills, yet dedicate only hours to behavioral preparation. This misalignment can cost you your dream role.
By the end of this guide, you'll have the frameworks, preparation techniques, and confidence to make the best impression in a behavioral interview.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
📖 What are behavioral interviews — and why they are more important than ever, in the age of AI.
🔬 What hiring managers are looking for — and how they evaluate your performance.
🥇 How to respond well — to communicate those signals to interviewers.
📚 How to prepare for them — including how to practice
🚩 Common pitfalls — the greatest hits of things you should avoid!
Let’s dive in!
📖 What are behavioral interviews?
Behavioral interviews are semi-structured conversations designed to assess how you will operate in the organization.
Unlike technical interviews that test your coding abilities or system design knowledge, behavioral interviews focus on your soft skills — your initiative, appetite for ambiguity, ability to persevere, conflict resolution skills, growth mindset, and communication.
Hiring managers use these interviews to determine the appropriate level at which to hire you and as you become more experienced, this interview is what truly establishes your seniority.
The premise behind behavioral interviews is simple but powerful: your past behavior is the best predictor of your future performance. The hallmark of these interviews then becomes “Tell me about a time when…” questions, using your past to gather data about how you might handle similar situations once you’re hired.
Tech companies have always had behavioral interviews, but AI-assisted coding is reshaping what companies value in software engineers and your soft skills are becoming your most valuable assets.
These assets are largely assessed in the behavioral interview, which is why those rounds are more important than ever 👇
🔬 What hiring managers are looking for
When organizations design their interview process, they structure their behavioral interviews to assess traits that make employees successful. These traits may align with explicit company values (like Amazon's Leadership Principles) or simply reflect the characteristics the organization needs at its current stage.
In interview parlance, these traits are often called Signal Areas and they typically are one or more of the following broad categories:
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