Top Microsoft Behavioral Interview Questions

Jane D. - "My approach to dealing with difficult stakeholders has always been: Engage - Directly engage with the stakeholder, meet or chat Listen - Listen to what they have to say, patiently. Understand - Understand their POV, even if it is impossible at some times Ask - Ask clarifying questions. Why? When? What? Engage again - Keep them in the loop until there is closure For example, we were in the final stages of a very important, strategic project for our organization. I was leading th"See full answer

Sreenisha S. - "Let me tell you about a time where a website I managed suddenly showed slow performance and the mistake on our side was it was unnoticed until a user reported the issue to management. As a PM for that project, I took full responsibility of the situation and worked with the engineering team to quickly resolve it. This mistake taught me the importance of focusing and monitoring non functional requirements as well in addition to new feature development /adoption where I was mostly spending my time"See full answer

Aabid S. - "We had a huge launch on September 1st of this year where we completely redesigned our application from the grounds up and also migrated to a new platform (React.JS). This project took us 8 months and the launch was a huge deal for the team. Unfortunately the launch wasn't as smooth as we expected and despite doing multiple rounds of QA, some major issues cropped up in the core part of the app right after launch and our client was quite upset since it was disrupting their day-to-day workflow. "See full answer

Aabid S. - "I work at a startup that makes software for Law Enforcement and the FBI. Our product analyzes calls being made by prison inmates and "listens" for predictors of violence and criminal behavior. Our clients are some of the top state prisons in the country. Recently one of the largest states in the country decided to evaluate our product for their prison system. I demo'd the product to the officers and they seemed to like everything. During the presentation they asked us if the product was ADA com"See full answer

Bipin R. - "As you know, this is the most important question for any interview. Here is a structure I like to follow, Start with 'I'm currently a SDE/PM/TPM etc with XYZ company.... ' Mention how you got into PM/TPM/SDE field (explaining your journey) Mention 1 or 2 accomplishments Mention what you do outside work (blogging, volunteer etc) Share why are you looking for a new role Ask the interviewer if they have any questions or will like to dive deep into any of your experience"See full answer

Anjali V. - "I feel this is more about "Describe a time when I failed or struggled" rather than "Project Failure"."See full answer

Mrinalini R. - "A good answer is describing an experience where you either proposed something that was selected after discussion or an alternate approach was taken, or you disagreed with a decision and argued for something else, either successfully or not. A good answer would be you had cogent arguments, the decision went another way for some reason, and you then fully backed the decision (agree to disagree is another way of stating it). You did not take it personally and you fully committed to the deci"See full answer

Saket S. - "I will divide my answer in 2 parts: Process I use for managing risks in any Project I will explain a real life situation where a Risk occurred and how I managed it Process for Risk Management can be broken down into 3 parts: Risk Identification: Risk identification is a team effort and is an ongoing process that happens throughout the Project. Technical Risks are usually identified during design/build/testing stage. I maintain a Risk register document to capture all the risks identified"See full answer

Abhinav M. - "Always assume good intentions on the part of both parties when resolving conflicts. Then proceed with a STAR example."See full answer

Shen W. - "For self achievement, The product manager builds useful products for users and makes the world better. For the team, The product manager can work with the team, and leverage the team resources to make things happen, which is more impactful. For the company, Pm are usually problem solvers, help companies to solve problems and grow better "See full answer

Amit A. - "What are you strengths -: My strengths would include my eagerness to learn. This allows me to be open to new projects, roles and products and I can give my 100% to achieve the goals expected of me Other strengths would include my collaborative approach to work. I believe a team can achieve tremendous success if shares a common goal, respects other's opinions and contribution and is built on fundamental of trust Finally my biggest strength would be my commitment and passion to solve the custome"See full answer

John F. - "Around mid-2023, I was tasked with investigating the feasibility of selling access to our site to third-party vendors who wanted to use bots to automate processes for their clients. Some initial work had been done on this but it was very high-level and very little data or analysis had actually been done. When I was tasked with this the idea was to sell access to a special header that would allow vendors to by-pass our F5 Shape implementation, a bot defense tool. From a business and security pers"See full answer

Shanavas M. - "I will have a discussion with him regarding why he disagrees with my solution. I will try to present him a plan about my solution. why I think its the best approach and take his feedback. I will try to analyze his approach and find the best in both approach. Will try to discuss with him and come up with an approach which is agreeable to both parties. The idea is refining the solution and approach instead of personally taking the disagreement. I will make sure that we are attacking the problem"See full answer

Pavani B. - "Request inputs/feedback on my response below with regards to this question and ways to improve and if it looks apt for this question. As a TPM at xxx, I was responsible for delivering a feature that would provide prescription (medications) alternatives to users in the Prescription Shopping Consumer Experience App. The project had a tight deadline as it was something that our account management team promised to a client who wanted it for their employees. My goal was to ensure smooth development"See full answer

Pramod V. - "Referring to https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/03/23/15-strategies-for-balancing-competing-stakeholder-priorities/?sh=7c82aa68262f Understand the conflicting priorities and align it with the goal/ objectives and the company mission. Start with the Least Common Denominator between the conflicting priorities to come to a commonality and start from there to objectively approach the next imp priority Always keep communication on and be transparent with 'equality' an"See full answer

Soumya S. - "In 2019, I was given a very important problem to solve. In a team of 3 we had to build a mobility assist device. The customer segment we would go for was something we could decide. The project was very close to me as I had lost someone I loved because of cancer and I saw how reduced mobility was a huge pain point in not being able to do physical activities. My team could only think of elderly people as the main target market. As the Head of Product what I did was: 1) I helped them dive even d"See full answer

Aditya S. - "I told a story about how our team was focussed on moving a key metric i.e. NPS and to do that we build 3 top requested user feature. Post release the detractors % didn't move even though the detractors request for features shipped went down. Then I connect with users and did some analysis post which we realised that we need to pivot our focus from shipping features to enabling complete workflows for our users i.e. shipping all those feature which are used together in a feature as then only users"See full answer

Praful B. - "The customer's business needs and requirements. The technical aspects of their legacy system. The budget and timeline constraints. The risks and mitigation strategies. The customer's specific concerns. Assess the feasibility of migrating their legacy system to the cloud - This will involve evaluating the technical aspects of their legacy system, as well as the business impact of the migration. Develop a migration plan -This plan should outline the steps involved in migrat"See full answer

Ben G. - "Situation - A time I dealt with conflict while on a team was while I was working at Shopify on physical and digital gift card refund point of sale solutions. The situation was that we were dealing with complex technical constraints including not changing particular UI components behavior to act as they should be intended. On the refund screen, the existing design was using a toggle on the same screen to bring up a modal for gift card selection to either select digital or physical options. Thi"See full answer

Shahrukh K. - "When I transitioned from the Analytics team to the Product team, I faced challenges in gaining the trust of the engineering team. Having previously worked with them in a role where I provided insights rather than defining their priorities, they were initially hesitant to accept my inputs in my new role. This led to some misalignment, as they chose to focus on tasks independently rather than incorporating my recommendations. Recognizing the need to build credibility, I took a proactive approach."See full answer