In a recent behavioral mock interview, I was asked the question "Tell me about a time you worked on a team."
From my understanding, the question's focus appears to be on teamwork and collaboration (i.e. do you work well in a team setting?).
A story I had was when I was working on a call history feature. The call was managed by the call center team, and I needed to integrate their API into our backend code to pull this data in real time. When I was trying to test the integration, I noticed the data that was being returned was incomplete, leading to difficulties with integration process.
Do you think this answer is on the right track? I would gladly appreciate any thoughts or feedback on this answer.
Big thanks for reading through all of this - I know it is a very long post and I really appreciate your time!
I agree with Alex that this is a poor question if that's truly how it was phrased.
In cases like this, instead of trying to divine what the interviewer is after, give them some options with commentary and let them pick:
I've worked on a number of teams. I could tell you about the scrappy MVP-driven startup team I was on or I could tell you about the quality-focused infrastructure team at Big Co or ...
The idea being to offer up what value the listener might get from each story.
Wow, if "Tell me about a time you worked on a team" is exactly how they phrased the question, that's kind of bad 🤣. I know the spirit behind the question, but engineers are literally always working on a team in a corporate setting, so it's a weird phrasing. Personally I would have asked it this way: "Describe a time where you demonstrated stellar teamwork."
Anyways, I think your story is good! It would definitely clear the bar for a junior engineer. If I were to give this question, the main signal I would look out for is the engineer working with other engineers (especially those who they're unfamiliar with) and demonstrating strong communication/empathy. Having some semblance of a problem/obstacle to overcome together is great too.