Master The Behavioral Interview As A Software Engineer
Data structures and algorithms problems (i.e. LeetCode) suck up all the attention among software engineers when it comes to interviews. However, you need to master far more than LeetCode to land a quality tech job (even at FAANG). If you want to succeed on the software engineer interview journey, you absolutely have to get good at what's actually the most important interview type: Behavioral interviews.
Here are the attributes of behavioral interviews that make them so critical:
- You will encounter them on every interview loop from Big Tech to early-stage startups
- They can screen you out early (often at the recruiter pre-screen)
- They're used extensively for leveling
- You cannot fail them and still get an offer
Despite this, many engineers see them as a fairly meaningless and "fluffy" exercise. This leads to them struggling with behavioral interviews, often not realizing that they're getting hard rejected on these rounds! By taking this course, that won't be you anymore. After going through it, you will:
- 🧠Have the right mentality to answer any behavioral question well
- ✅ Understand good vs. bad behavioral answers
- 📖 Use the right tactics to prepare properly
- 🤔 Possess the skills to vet the company
- 📊 Know what behavioral performances look like across different levels
The beautiful thing about behavioral interviews is that by improving at them, you just become a better software engineer overall. Skills like effective communication, speaking with charisma, and empathizing with others are fundamental skills that are useful anywhere at any stage in your career.
Alex Chiou is a proven Silicon Valley engineer with 10 years of experience across top tech companies like PayPal, Course Hero (now Learneo, a $3.6B unicorn), Meta, and Robinhood. He started off as a new-grad at PayPal in 2014 making $85k and grew to a high-performing tech lead at Robinhood in 2021 making $750k.
With 4 different companies across 8 years, Alex got incredibly good at interviews with one of his strongest points being behavioral rounds:
- For Course Hero, Alex did so well in the behavioral round with the VP of Engineering that he got a phone call 1 hour after the onsite saying that he was being extended the offer. The offer ended up increasing his salary by over 50%!
- For Meta, Alex passed their behavioral interview with less than 5 hours of studying.
- For Robinhood, Alex passed their behavioral interview with less than 2 hours of studying. It went so well that he ended up teaching the hiring manager giving the round insights about effective mentorship!
When you're operating at the absolute highest levels of behavioral interviews, it ceases to feel like an interview and more like a fun conversation between 2 incredibly talented people. Through years of hard work, Alex got that level and is excited to get you there too.
Interview 0 -> Interview Hero
Alex is an introvert and grew up incredibly shy, having very few friends all the way up through high school and most of college. He then graduated UCLA as a lackluster student, just barely maintaining a ~3.0 GPA. He had poor communication skills and a tiny professional network - It's needless to say that he was terrible at behavioral interviews as well.
Fast forward to his later years, and Alex improved on all those fronts. He became an expert communication and a tech lead after just a few years, building all of Course Hero's initial Android app from scratch and creating a team of 4 Android engineers behind it. His professional network reaches far and wide across FAANG, top startups, and everything in between. Armed with an arsenal of incredibly rich career stories and charisma, behavioral interviews became a walk in the park for Alex.
Alex is living proof that the skills necessary to become a behavioral interview master can be learned, no matter how much of an introvert or weak communicator you are. You just need to put in the effort and have the proper guidance, which is what this course provides.
Expert Of The Other Side
Alex was involved in the hiring process for all 4 of his companies, doing 250+ interviews. Of those interviews, 50+ were behavioral interviews. On top of those, Alex has also done 50+ mock behavioral interviews, coaching dozens of engineers to cracking behavioral interviews at top companies like FAANG.
Alex deeply understands:
- The difference between a passing and failing behavioral interview performance
- The most common reasons software engineers fail behavioral interview rounds, often stemming from their incorrect preparation and lackluster skill development
- What good behavioral interview performances look like at each level from junior (L3) to mid-level (L4) to senior (L5) to staff (L6)
awesome course from Alex as always.
There are a lot of take-aways with regards to mentality and approaches that I am applying for myself (reflecting on past experiences and moving forward) to become not just prepared for behavioral interviews, but also understand what makes a great engineer. The introduction and summaries for leveling alone has helped me understand where I'm at as an engineer and what I aim to do to level up. I appreciate the emphasis on engineering being collaborative and the need to take a step out to be vulnerable and not just shy away because of being an introvert. Thank you, Alex!
Phenomenal insights on how to master behavioral interviews!
Incredibly relevant for my behavioral interviews, and I saw the ideas here work across many companies. Thanks Taro!
I've read a lot of guides on behavioral interviews and this one is the best.
I loved this course, so much learning from it. From being an interviewer (50+ behavioral) I was intuitively evaluating candidates on a lot of things Alex mentions (culture fit, complexity of projects, being articulate etc) but I didn't think through these consciously.
This course breaks down so well what it takes to do great at behavioral interviews starting with doing great work and having awesome projects that you can talk about and then representing them well.
I haven't seen a more comprehensive guide on behavioral interviews.
Great!
