[1/2] Behavioral Interview Discussion with Ex-Meta Hiring Committee Member (Category Management)

Interesting. discussion Behavioral interviews in big tech companies. It is itself performed in the form of an interview that Stefan Mai takes with Austen McDonald, a former senior engineering manager at Meta and a member of the hiring committee there. In this interview, Austin shares his experiences and his thoughts on behavioral interviews. I liked this recording because I often interview engineers and executives myself and know what I’m talking about firsthand. This is what I learned from this interview.

1. Austin believes that behavioral interviews require careful preparation, with preparation providing the opportunity to become a better engineer in the future due to deep reflection on the experience and achievements in past projects. I think that reflective skills are the key to growing over yourself every day, but it’s usually not too pleasant, so people avoid such thinking, and preparing for an interview helps them find the strength to do it.
2. Behavioral interviews are important for high grades, both engineering and managerial. Companies evaluate past successes and behaviors and use this as an extrapolation of a candidate’s future performance.
3. Behavioral interviews vary depending on the grade, in this video Austin gives examples of such differences.
4. Companies have criteria for evaluating candidates, such as initiative, perseverance, etc.
5. Large companies tend to avoid subjective decisions, so formalize the evaluation criteria.
6. As always, the first impression is very important, so it is important to start the interview correctly. ||shit up||. The author recommends preparing answers to questions that are likely to be asked at the beginning of the interview: “Tell about yourself”, “Tell about your favorite project”. The answers to these questions will set the right tone for the whole meeting.
7. Standard schemes are often used for interviews, such as STAR. (Situation - Tasks - Actions - Results) CARL (Context - Actions - Results - Learning)Austin likes CARL more than Star because of the last point about lessons learned, and recommends spending less time on context and more time on action and results. 8 ) Standardized approach (Star / Carl / Your favorite) can interfere with a relaxed conversation and look unnatural, this is solved by training interviewers

Continuation of the story in the second post.

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