Here are the 10 most common behavioral software engineering interview questions and how to answer [Music] them. Number one: Tell me about yourself. This sounds obvious, but it's the most common question that you get when you walk into the interview room. Interviewers just want to understand a little bit more about who you are, your background, and what might be relevant for you as you interview for this role. Keep it short, simple, and clear, and keep it to maybe a few points that you really, really want to make sure that your interviewer remembers after the interview. Number two: Tell me about a project that you've worked on. In this interview question, your interviewer is just trying to get a better sense of your experience. Tell them a little bit more about the challenges you had with the project, the successes, and the impact that it had on the team. Still, keep it short; the interviewer doesn't want a whole story; they just want to understand a little bit more about what you did, and they'll ask follow-up questions if they want to learn more. Number three:

disagreement questions. These questions might look like, Tell me about a time that you had a disagreement with your manager, or Tell me about a time when you were working cross-functionally with a product manager or with a designer, and you had a disagreement. In these interview questions, your interviewer is assessing your capacity for conflict and being able to navigate conflict, which is a necessary part of any sort of engineering job. In this question, showcase that you dealt with a challenging scenario, that you learned how to actively listen, how to collaborate, how to compromise, and how to ultimately come to a solution that worked well for both yourself and the engineering team, as well as everyone else involved. If you want to go deeper on how to actually answer these questions and to learn more about different types of questions that are asked in behavioral software engineering interviews, check out Trixon, where we have a list of thousands of interview questions and detailed guides on how to answer these questions, as well as mock interview videos where we show you how.

the interviewers themselves answer the question number four technical fluency. In these types of questions, your interviewer wants to understand that you know how to take your technical knowledge and translate it into layperson speak. What I mean by this is a question sort of like Tell me about a time when you had to go about explaining a technical concept to a non-technical person. Your interviewer wants to make sure that if you join their company, that you'll be able to collaborate not just with other engineers who are very technical, but with other folks on the team in various divisions who may not have a grasp of the same technical concepts that you do. This is an important skill in any sort of software engineering role, but in particular, comes up in the behavioral interview questions. Number five, handling constraints questions. These questions might look something like Tell me about a time when you had to work on a tight deadline, or Tell me about a time when you had to decide between a code refactor or shipping something sooner rather than later. As a software engineer, you're

always battling against different constraints, and your job is to make sure that you're prioritizing the company and the project objective and balancing the different constraints. So, these questions assess for that. In these questions, just make sure to articulate how you thought about handling the different constraints, how you thought about the different options available to you, and why you ultimately picked the option that you did, and the eventual impact that it had on both yourself, the project, and the team. Number six, what's an area of weakness you're working on? These questions assess your ability to be self-aware and to be coachable. It's important for software engineers to be able to grow and to learn, and everyone has their weaknesses, so be honest and upfront about what those might be. Oftentimes, interviewers ask this question to get a better sense of what the managerial relationship might look like. For instance, if I were to manage you, maybe I need to make sure that I'm very thoughtful about making sure that you're organized because that's an area of difficulty for you. This isn't a bad

thing. It's just getting your interviewer and you a better sense of what your relationship might look like. Number seven, what are your career goals? These questions get a better sense of how you might want to grow in the organization. Be upfront and honest about what it is for you that you're excited about. It might be about moving into certain industries. It might be working on certain types of projects, for instance, moving more in the front end versus back end, or it could even be more about being on a manager track versus being on a senior IC track. This will help your manager get a better sense of what it might be like to manage you and how to sort of manage you in the right direction and making sure that your career goals map up to what the company's goals are. Number eight, why do you want to work for this company? This is a question that comes up in most behavioral interviews and is really, really important. My number one recommendation here is to simply do your research, understand the company deeply, understand the goals of the company, and

understand how your goals and your interests fit in and map to the goals of the company. Number nine: why do you want to leave your last company? This is an opportunity for you to share a little bit more about what didn't work with your past company. My recommendation here is to not be super disparaging of your previous company, but just be thoughtful about what worked and what didn't work and how this company might be a better opportunity for you. Now, if you've been laid off, that might be a slightly different story. My recommendation is still to be honest and upfront about what happened in the scenario and what you're really excited about in this company and in this role. Number 10: what are you looking for in your next role? This is a really great opportunity to share what you're excited about with both the company and the role. There's an opportunity here also to sort of shape your relationship with who might be managing with or who might be on your team, which often case the interviewer is in this case.

share a little bit more. Are you interested in mentorship, learning opportunities, or maybe gaining more technical expertise? This will help make sure that there's an alliance between both you as the employee and the manager in the role. I hope this was a helpful overview of the top 10 most common software engineering interview questions. Good luck on your upcoming interview. [Music]

Top 10 Behavioral Software Engineering Interview Questions

Top 10 Behavioral Software Engineering Interview Questions

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