Can I repeat my stories in a behavioral interview?

Feb 27

The short answer is no, you can’t use the same story twice in one interview.

The longer answer is that sometimes you may need to reuse an example if you don’t have very many stories or if you don’t have one that fits the new question.

Is repeating my answers in an interview okay?

Repeating answers is okay if you don’t have a different story, but if you can avoid repeating that’s a better choice.

If you get asked a question, and you can’t think of a different example, first pause to give yourself some time.

If that doesn’t help and you do have a story you can use, but you’ve already used it, you can use it again. Don’t just repeat the story word for word though. You’ll have to tailor it to the new question. I’ll give you some tips on how to tailor a story below.

Can I answer different interview questions with the same example?

Yes, you can use the same story twice, but not more than twice. There are two reasons for this:

They will be taking notes. If you keep repeating, they will notice and think you don’t have enough experience.
The stories should be selling your skills. If you tell 2 stories instead of 4, they will just see proof of half the skills you could have talked about.

So I said you can use a story twice, and you might need to, but it’s better to give a new story for each question.

How many different examples will I need for one interview?

You will usually get asked between 2 and 6 behavioral questions in a one-hour interview.

Because you can’t know exactly how many you’ll get asked, you should prepare for as many as possible. Also, even if you get asked only one, you don’t know which one it will be. You need to prepare more answers than just one in order to make sure you have one that will work for that particular question.

Fifteen to thirty is a good number of stories

I recommend having between fifteen and thirty good stories. If you have fewer than fifteen you could be in trouble, but if you have more than thirty, it’s hard to remember them all.

Create a pool of stories and then tailor each one to fit the question

Create a pool of stories – between fifteen and thirty – and then tailor your stories for different questions depending on which ones they ask you.

Tailor each story

What do I mean by tailoring a story for whatever question you get asked?

What if you have two stories you’ve planned to use for ownership questions but you also have two customer-related stories. You use your two ownership stories, but then you get asked a third ownership question. What do you do? You could not answer the question, or you could take one of your customer stories and use it to answer the ownership question, if you change the wording a little. The latter is obviously the best choice because it’s best if you answer all of the questions.

Altering, or tailoring, an answer quickly isn’t easy and can take some practice. What you want to do is create a group of stories, and then spend your prep time practicing tailoring a story to work for different questions. If you practice tailoring stories, you will get good enough so you can adapt them quickly, after you hear what question you need to answer.

You can take a basic story and alter it to fit whatever question you get asked. If you get asked a customer question, you’ll focus your answer on talking about the customer. If you get asked an ownership question, you’ll focus your answer on how you took charge. If you get asked a successful project question, you’ll focus your answer on the successful outcome. And so on.

But really, how many stories will I need?

I said to prepare fifteen to thirty stories, but how many will you actually need?

I don’t know how many behavioral questions they’ll ask you. Each interview is different. If you have seven interviewers, and they each ask you five behavioral questions, that’s thirty-five questions. What if you have five interviewers and they each ask you three behavioral questions? That’s fifteen questions.

I’ve had clients tell me they’ve gotten one behavioral question and clients tell me they’ve gotten six in a one hour interview. I’ve also had clients tell me they’ve gotten more than six.

That’s why my answer is fifteen to thirty stories.

I know it’s a lot of stories, but it’s better to have more than you need than not enough.