I wrote about how I prepare for behavioral interviews here.

But I think it is critical to understand what the behavioral interviews are meant to measure before you start preparing for individual questions.

Quite simply a behavioral interview is meant to look for passion.

1. Passion for software engineering,
2. Passion for the job/company you are applying for
3. Passion for cultivating great team culture.

If your answer to any question during the interview does not highlight passion for one of the three categories I mentioned above – you are wasting time.

The interviewer is constantly looking for signals that prove: you love to code, you care about the product they are building and that you care about the people you work with.

If your answer is not giving this signal, why are you talking?

This may seem harsh, but having faced and taken behavioral interviews over the years, I know this to be the truth.

Also, never lie. This seems obvious to me, but apparently people think you could lie in a behavioral interview and get by – people who take these interviews are extremely good at judging responses (both your words and your body language) and they know exactly the follow ups to ask to determine if you are being honest or not. So just don’t – lying guarantees hard rejection even if you had done extremely well on your DSA rounds.