Behavioral Question Challenges
Hey guys, As I am preparing for a facebook behavioral interview, I have prepared a response for the question - How do you tackle challenges? Name a difficult challenge you faced while working on a project, how you overcame it, and what you learned. Situation, Task: When the product X was in a development phase, I was assigned to build a end-to-end Y feature. I had previous experience working with implementing the client side of Y. However, I had never worked on a server side Y feature before and did not get a chance to tackle associated problems. Action: The first action that I took was to identify the challenges associated with a real-life Y feature. Next, I tried to ramp up with the network architecture and broke it down to different logical blocks. With this information, I presented a High level Design to the team. Result: There were multiple back and forth exchange of ideas with the team and finalized the design. Having followed a structured step by step process, I was able to implement and deploy the feature in the following week addressing all the potential issues. I found this a very good learning and challenging experience. As a response to this, I am expecting interviewer to drill through the project and the various aspects of it. Do I need to give more technical details or focus on personal traits like communication and problem-solving? Are interviewers expecting a more complex challenge from a senior engineer? Is this example not good enough? YOE: 9 TC : 230K
@bumbun good feedback. I assume you are interviewer. So could you let us know what you would like to hear may be with an example ? Thanks
Depends on seniority. Senior engineers often work with ambiguous problems and cross fun stakeholders - was there a massive technical undertaking that you undertook which fixed the Oncall health of the team reducing the outages. Was there a very difficult PM you worked with whom you had to push back on, managing scope, protecting engineering concerns etc etc
Nice this helps. Thanks
I think what you presented seems very generic in a way I can’t really separate you from any other candidate, it almost feels like you are saying what I want to hear. Also as engineers we are often in situations where we have to learn something new - it’s not a challenge but part of the job, so i would be thinking how are you stretching beyond your responsibilities here.
Very constructive feedback. Thanks.
No sweat. Interviewers value authenticity and can detect rehearsed responses. I know it’s hard to be very natural in such as unnatural setting but try talking to a friend and pretend it’s not an interview and ask them how it sounds.