20 common behavioral interview questions and how to create strong answers
If you're preparing for your job interview, you should learn the basics of behavioral interviews and behavioral interview questions.
If you’ve learned what behavioral interviews are and want to know more about the behavioral questions and the way to answer them, keep reading.
What are behavioral questions?
Behavioral questions are the ones that start with something like, "Give me an example of..." or "Can you tell me about a time..."
They are questions that are asking for a story / example as the answer.
Do all job interviews have behavioral questions?
Most job interviews in America or at English-speaking companies will be a mix of small talk in the beginning, basic HR questions ("Tell me about yourself" / "Why do you want to work at our company?" / "Why are you leaving your current job?"), questions about your skills and experience, and behavioral questions.
Not all interviews will have behavioral questions, but they are very common.
How do I know if I’ll have behavioral questions in my interview?
Most interviews will have behavioral questions. However, you should look on Glassdoor to check whether your company commonly asks these questions. Even though they’re very common, some companies are the exceptions to this rule so checking will keep you from wasting your time prepping when you don’t need to.
Categories of behavioral questions
There are hundreds, probably thousands, of behavioral questions. There are so many possibilities it’s better if you group them into categories so they’re easier to think about. In my article about the fundamentals of behavioral interviews, I talked about a few of the categories: customer service, people management, project management, innovation, mistake/failure, and conflict. Questions can also be about problem solving, team work, stress management, and prioritization, among other topics.
That’s a lot of topics to prepare for - Here’s a shorter, more focused list to start your prep:
20 common behavioral questions
What’s the project you’re most proud of?
What’s the most complicated project you’ve worked on?
Tell me about a time you went above and beyond expectations.
When did you have to make an important decision quickly?
Tell me about the toughest decision you had to make in the past 6 months?
Tell me about a time you took a calculated risk. What was the outcome?
Tell me about an out-of-the-box idea you had or decision you made that had a big impact on the business.
When did you have to learn something new to do your job?
Tell me about a time you coached someone. What happened?
When were you able to remove a serious roadblock preventing your team from making progress.
Have you ever worked on a project that changed significantly while it was in progress?
Tell me about a difficult problem you had to solve. How did you analyze it?
When did you have to deal with a difficult stakeholder?
When did you run into a challenge on a project and how did you get past it?
When did you have a disagreement with a colleague?
When did you make a mistake?
Tell me about a goal you failed to achieve.
When did you miss a deadline?
Tell me about a time you had an unhappy customer. What was the problem? What did you do to address it? What was their reaction?
When did you get some negative feedback?
To create strong answers for behavioral questions, use the STAR method
The STAR technique, or the shorter PAR, will help you give good well structured behavioral interview answers.
What is the STAR technique?
The STAR technique is a common system or method used to answer behavioral interview questions.
You can’t use it to answer the basic questions like “What are your strengths?” or “Why do you want to work here?”
STAR provides a structure for you to remember so that you will include the correct information in your answers.
These are the 4 steps of the technique:
S – Situation - background info
T – Task - what your job was in this situation
A – Activity - what you did - this should be the longest part of the answer
R – Result - positive; quantifiable; what you learned; what you would do differently next time
If you get asked a behavioral question, answer by going through the letters in order. First give the S part (explain the basic situation). Then give the T (what was your job/task in this situation?) Then A or action (show what you did). Last, give the R (outcome).
Example answers for common behavioral questions
Sample answer – “Tell me about a goal you had and how you achieved it."
S/T – After I got promoted, I realized that we had more projects than originally pIanned and I would need more product managers to complete them. Hiring was my responsibility so I needed to decide how many to hire.
A – I charted our planned projects and then decided how many people I thought I needed. I used our records as well as my own observations. I came up with the number of people and then asked my colleagues for their opinions. Once we had a final number I worked with recruiting to interview candidates and eventually hired the right number of people.
R - Now we're adequately staffed and the work is going well.
Tip: This is a good answer, but if possible pick an example where you can use numbers in your results. For instance, "And we made 5% more this quarter," or "My sales numbers are up 25% over last year." Numbers make the results more impressive.
Sample answer – "Tell me about a time you had a difficult situation with an employee."
S/T – I recently had an employee, one of my product managers, who was not performing well. The people she worked with were complaining about her attitude and the executives were complaining about the quality of her work. They wanted me to fire her but I wasn't sure that was the right thing to do.
A – I talked to HR and the executive team, and we decided to collect the evidence about her performance in a document and then present it to her. I did this. During her review, she was very angry and blamed her problems on the company structure. In the end, we decided that we would closely together for 60 days to improve her performance.
R – My plan was successful in that her performance did improve (as well as her attitude). I'm not happy with the amount of time I have to spend with her, but I hope that by spending the time mentoring her now I will end up with a good product manager who can work independently of me.
Tip: Don't pick a situation to talk about that doesn't have a happy ending (or at least shows improvement).
Next steps
If you’ve read the behavioral question fundamentals article plus this one, you know enough about behavioral interviews and behavioral questions to get started with your prep. This is the point where you might be freaking out, because you’ve realized there are so many potential questions. Yep, there are a lot.
You need a plan for your prep and get some feedback from someone who can help you make your answers stronger. Let me know if I can help with that.
This answer has been updated for 2023.