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FAANG hiring managers share how to answer behavioral interview questions

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Re: FAANG hiring managers share how to answer behavioral interview questions

#51

Post by mewpmewp2 »

keyboardbarista wrote: post #41
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet managers, advice columns and books keep spouting the "honest" part. But I guess if one believes those columns one is too naive and therefore not qualified for the job. It is actually a bit similar when girls say they want a "sweet, nice and caring" guy. But there are people who think they should follow those rules, fail and become resentful towards society for teaching them wrong things. This is just an observati…

Ignore barry-cotter. People do expect you to be honest. It's not a trick question, and there is no clandestine cabal of hiring managers who only want to hire people who play a secret interview game well. > It is actually a bit similar when girls say they want a "sweet, nice and caring" guy. In my experience, many women really do want nice, sweet, caring guys. It's just easy for men to think those are the only traits…

They do want, it is mainly that this is what they keep talking about so it is easy to misunderstand that this is all you have to be.

What they are really attracted to is confidence and often during teenage years and beginning of 20s as well, people who don't give a shit about anyone or anything are the most confident. Hence what happens is the girls are with those confident guys and guys who try to have the traits girls talk about are not. It is not easy to realize this if what you keep hearing from girls, media and films about what they look for in a man.

But actually we are not disagreeing.

This is why it fits with the honest criteria well as it is not clearly so black and white.

Re: FAANG hiring managers share how to answer behavioral interview questions

#52

Post by mewpmewp2 »

keyboardbarista wrote: post #41
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet managers, advice columns and books keep spouting the "honest" part. But I guess if one believes those columns one is too naive and therefore not qualified for the job. It is actually a bit similar when girls say they want a "sweet, nice and caring" guy. But there are people who think they should follow those rules, fail and become resentful towards society for teaching them wrong things. This is just an observati…

Ignore barry-cotter. People do expect you to be honest. It's not a trick question, and there is no clandestine cabal of hiring managers who only want to hire people who play a secret interview game well. > It is actually a bit similar when girls say they want a "sweet, nice and caring" guy. In my experience, many women really do want nice, sweet, caring guys. It's just easy for men to think those are the only traits…

Also in the end there are probably different types of managers. Some expect honesty, some don't. Some are optimistic about humankind, some not and others in-between. All of those types can provide value though.

Re: FAANG hiring managers share how to answer behavioral interview questions

#53

Post by mewpmewp2 »

hobbio wrote: post #48
barry-cotter wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As someone who has social anxiety and depression I don't think I can be honest with a lot of these questions. You’re not supposed to be honest. No one expects you to be honest. Everyone knows everyone knows it’s a game. It’s like the algorithm and data structure interview; it shows preparation and intelligence to be able to answer the questions well, whether your answers are based on a real event or pure fiction. I…

If you have a firm background and not depending on the job to save you from death by hunger, then you can enjoy the luxury of being honest. Interestingly, being honest will make you bold and empower to ask questions about sensitive issues you really care about in a job.

Yeah one of my biggest goals is to have "fuck you" retiring money. I wonder if this will drop my anxiety.

I have enough for 6 months for now, but it is not enough. I definitely need to be set for life to not feel that anxiety.

Re: FAANG hiring managers share how to answer behavioral interview questions

#56

Post by chris11 »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #52
keyboardbarista wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignore barry-cotter. People do expect you to be honest. It's not a trick question, and there is no clandestine cabal of hiring managers who only want to hire people who play a secret interview game well. > It is actually a bit similar when girls say they want a "sweet, nice and caring" guy. In my experience, many women really do want nice, sweet, caring guys. It's just easy for men to think those are the only traits…

Also in the end there are probably different types of managers. Some expect honesty, some don't. Some are optimistic about humankind, some not and others in-between. All of those types can provide value though.

I think it also shows the importance of soft skills. There's been a couple times where I've had disagreements with my team leadership, or senior management. I could make statements about why I thought I had made reasonable decisions. But honestly I would admit that those situations wouldn't have been as serious if I had communicated differently. So at the very least I've learned where overcommunication might be important.

Re: FAANG hiring managers share how to answer behavioral interview questions

#57

Post by eschneider »

wwweston wrote: post #17

"What's your biggest weakness?" "Well, I tend to think about things that may be interesting and even have implications for work at hand for a given organization, but may turn out to be impolitic. For example: to what degree do behavioral interview questions either resemble on the job activity, or correlate with performance? If that degree is small, what's the real function of behavioral interview questions? Now, I'm…

I dunno, I’d probably hire on the “fire” answer.

Re: FAANG hiring managers share how to answer behavioral interview questions

#58

Post by hc91 »

barry-cotter wrote: post #27
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #12

As someone who has social anxiety and depression I don't think I can be honest with a lot of these questions. My real weakness would be inability to connect with people and constant fear of doing something wrong or being terrible at what I do. I usually think up some random weaknesses that I consider irrelevant and speak about those just to prove that I can be self aware. Also I think very big portion what I am sayin…

> As someone who has social anxiety and depression I don't think I can be honest with a lot of these questions. You’re not supposed to be honest. No one expects you to be honest. Everyone knows everyone knows it’s a game. It’s like the algorithm and data structure interview; it shows preparation and intelligence to be able to answer the questions well, whether your answers are based on a real event or pure fiction. I…

Totally agree! You should be clinically insane to give honest answers to those questions.

Re: FAANG hiring managers share how to answer behavioral interview questions

#59

Post by username90 »

chris11 wrote: post #29
happytoexplain wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Telling interviewees that what interviewers want to hear is "honest answers" sounds like the advice of somebody so deep in manager land they've become out of touch with the fundamentals of human interaction. The beginning of a business relationship is no different from the beginning of any relationship: You can be perfectly honest without being so frank about your flaws that you create a bad impression. The…

I'm not a manager, or even a senior engineer. But I've also noticed personally that I'm comfortable judging an interviewee's answer to my open-ended questions. I really like concise answers that make it easy for me to dig into specific details. I can have objective standards for answers about specific details. Giving a handwavy answer to an open-ended question may be better than giving a detailed answer that leads to…

> But I've also noticed personally that I'm comfortable judging an interviewee's answer to my open-ended questions.

This is almost surely due to bias, almost everyone believe they are good at it but statistics say that the ones who can judge it are so few that there is no point in trying.

Re: FAANG hiring managers share how to answer behavioral interview questions

#60

Post by username90 »

keyboardbarista wrote: post #50
detaro wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's say you name a reasonable weakness that can easily be improved upon and that doesn't spell disaster for your ability to do your job. To the recipient, that is equally likely the rehearsed answer, because from high school on your told to think of one to reply to that question that fits into what your interviewer probably thinks is reasonable. And there's the entire thing where some people answering truthfully…

The stereotypical rehearsed answer is the Michael Scott one, where you dodge the question by actually naming a strength and pretending it's a weakness. In my experience working at places full of smart, talented, ambitious people looking to fill a role with a similar caliber of person: don't do that.

Most people knows that you should give a "real" but insignificant weakness just as you said you wanted in the previous post instead of non-weaknesses. If you don't think that people have practiced such answers and carefully picked their "weakness" then you are ignorant.
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