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!
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.