How To Ace Your Software Engineering Interview — Part 2 (Behavioral Questions)
You now know how to ace data structures and algorithms questions, but you’re not sure how to tackle the second most common kind of software engineering interview questions: Behavioral questions (otherwise known as “cultural questions”). Well, you’re in luck, because this article will teach you how to do just that. To start off, let’s go over the core signals you need to show when answering these questions.
- You’re passionate about software engineering
- You’re passionate about the company you’re interviewing for
- You work well with others
Whenever you’re answering these questions, every single word you say needs to go towards showing one of these 3 core signals. Now that we have that out of way, let’s put these ideas into practice by going through how to answer 5 of the most common behavioral questions.
“So tell me about yourself”
This isn’t a “blank check” question where you just get to ramble on about whatever niche hobbies you have. The best use of this question is to show core signal #1. The easiest way to do this is talk about how you got into programming and what made you stick with it. Talk about what brings you joy during software development, whether it’s solving…
