Skip to main content

Behavioral Interview Questions

Review this list of 70 Behavioral interview questions and answers verified by hiring managers and candidates.
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    109 answers
    Video answer for 'Tell me about a time when you made short-term sacrifices for long-term gains.'
    +101

    "Recently, I had to make a decision that I could automate a part of a process now and help the operations team reducing 9 hours of manual work to 60 minutes for one client. The second option was to fully automate the end to end process that would take 4 weeks of development, but fully automate the process and that could be rolled out across the board. The process was to change the member's paperless preference to paper when a sent email gets bounced 3 times in a row and inform her with a paper"

    Anonymous Aardvark - "Recently, I had to make a decision that I could automate a part of a process now and help the operations team reducing 9 hours of manual work to 60 minutes for one client. The second option was to fully automate the end to end process that would take 4 weeks of development, but fully automate the process and that could be rolled out across the board. The process was to change the member's paperless preference to paper when a sent email gets bounced 3 times in a row and inform her with a paper"See full answer

    Product Manager
    Behavioral
    +5 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    94 answers
    +90

    "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"

    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

    Product Manager
    Behavioral
    +8 more
  • Airbnb logoAsked at Airbnb 
    107 answers
    Video answer for 'Tell me about a time you made a mistake.'
    +96

    "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"

    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

    Software Engineer
    Behavioral
    +10 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    35 answers
    +29

    "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. "

    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

    Software Engineer
    Behavioral
    +7 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    47 answers
    Video answer for 'Tell me about a time when you worked on a project with a tight deadline.'
    +43

    "A clarifying question: Is this question asking about when I met a tight deadline in a project or how did I manage a project that had a tight deadline? The answer uploaded to this question is good, I would also add 'creating a critical path from overall project schedule and then making sure that none of the deliverables in the critical path are sacrificed in order to meet the tight deadline' as an action taken."

    Ushita S. - "A clarifying question: Is this question asking about when I met a tight deadline in a project or how did I manage a project that had a tight deadline? The answer uploaded to this question is good, I would also add 'creating a critical path from overall project schedule and then making sure that none of the deliverables in the critical path are sacrificed in order to meet the tight deadline' as an action taken."See full answer

    Product Manager
    Behavioral
    +5 more
  • 🧠 Want an expert answer to a question? Saving questions lets us know what content to make next.

  • Accenture logoAsked at Accenture 
    126 answers
    Video answer for 'Tell me about yourself.'
    +118

    "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"

    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

    Product Manager
    Behavioral
    +17 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    12 answers
    Video answer for 'Tell me about a time you took a calculated risk when speed was critical.'
    +9

    "Just a bit of context on what could be a risk in Product or Software Development. We talk about the Scope, Quality, and Time Triangle. IMHO the only variables that can matter and can pose risk are these. Try to form an answer where you used the Effort, Value, Risk framework to quantify the risk. The answer can be similar to short term sacrifices for long term gains, as you do take in mind the risk the short term sacrifices pose. Situation - I was leading the team to complete an overhaul of the"

    Umang S. - "Just a bit of context on what could be a risk in Product or Software Development. We talk about the Scope, Quality, and Time Triangle. IMHO the only variables that can matter and can pose risk are these. Try to form an answer where you used the Effort, Value, Risk framework to quantify the risk. The answer can be similar to short term sacrifices for long term gains, as you do take in mind the risk the short term sacrifices pose. Situation - I was leading the team to complete an overhaul of the"See full answer

    Product Manager
    Behavioral
    +1 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    28 answers
    Video answer for 'Tell me about a time when you solved a complex problem and how you went about it.'
    +12

    "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"

    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

    Product Manager
    Behavioral
    +6 more
  • Anthropic logoAsked at Anthropic 
    5 answers
    Video answer for 'Tell me about a time the business problem wasn’t clearly defined. How did you handle it?'
    +2

    "I was assigned to a project where the executive team said they wanted to "improve customer satisfaction" but provided no specific metrics, target outcomes, or scope. The initial brief was vague; they mentioned customer complaints were increasing, but hadn't quantified the problem or identified which customer segments or processes were involved. My responsibility was to lead the analysis and develop a solution; however, first, I needed to transform this ambiguous directive into a clearly defined"

    Dhruv M. - "I was assigned to a project where the executive team said they wanted to "improve customer satisfaction" but provided no specific metrics, target outcomes, or scope. The initial brief was vague; they mentioned customer complaints were increasing, but hadn't quantified the problem or identified which customer segments or processes were involved. My responsibility was to lead the analysis and develop a solution; however, first, I needed to transform this ambiguous directive into a clearly defined"See full answer

    Data Analyst
    Behavioral
    +2 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    60 answers
    Video answer for 'What is the project you are most proud of?'
    +53

    "I was working for my friend building streams at venues across the Chicago land area for FGC (fighting game tournaments), I adjusted and engineered his equipment to be set up permanently that's until covid came around at least. I used OBS to give visual appearances to stream watchers. So we're talking about subscribe, follow, and donation notifications and things of that nature for viewers to know they contributed in one of those ways. I set up proper sign-up scheduling for participants to lock t"

    Ayinde B. - "I was working for my friend building streams at venues across the Chicago land area for FGC (fighting game tournaments), I adjusted and engineered his equipment to be set up permanently that's until covid came around at least. I used OBS to give visual appearances to stream watchers. So we're talking about subscribe, follow, and donation notifications and things of that nature for viewers to know they contributed in one of those ways. I set up proper sign-up scheduling for participants to lock t"See full answer

    Software Engineer
    Behavioral
    +13 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    4 answers
    Video answer for 'Tell me about a time you made a bold and difficult decision.'
    +1

    "Scenario - I had joined a product in my current company as a PM midway through its development. It is a very sensitive product with a major public services company. As the product was close to its go-live date, it had to go through many checks and many signoffs. A couple of them were through data policy department and the platform department, of which we were using all of the components for our product. We needed policy sign off to authorise the use of data to understand user interactions and"

    Umang S. - "Scenario - I had joined a product in my current company as a PM midway through its development. It is a very sensitive product with a major public services company. As the product was close to its go-live date, it had to go through many checks and many signoffs. A couple of them were through data policy department and the platform department, of which we were using all of the components for our product. We needed policy sign off to authorise the use of data to understand user interactions and"See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    Behavioral
    +1 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    26 answers
    Video answer for 'Tell me about a time when you solved pain points for customers.'
    +23

    "Please Review. Thanks In advance! Situation: ABC Product Planners asked me to help them to migrate their one Excel-based Macro into the web application. After having a few rounds of interviews with Product Planners, I realized that the macro was not able to solve their current problem due to its limitation and business teams were convinced that it couldn't be resolved completely. The key challenges they had with their current macro-based solutions were: It was able to compute all bui"

    Books' B. - "Please Review. Thanks In advance! Situation: ABC Product Planners asked me to help them to migrate their one Excel-based Macro into the web application. After having a few rounds of interviews with Product Planners, I realized that the macro was not able to solve their current problem due to its limitation and business teams were convinced that it couldn't be resolved completely. The key challenges they had with their current macro-based solutions were: It was able to compute all bui"See full answer

    Behavioral
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    10 answers
    Video answer for 'What product that you led are you most proud of and why?'
    +6

    "I was working for an Insurance company and I was the lead PM responsible for delivering HIPAA 5010 835 (statement of bill claims received vs paid) transactions to healthcare providers/hospitals For this initiative as a PM, I was responsible to create and prioritize features around file creation. I collaborated with cross-functional teams, engineers, DevOps. First I conducted sessions with claims adjudication, SFTP file transfer, security, and privacy, clearinghouse, third-party vendors and ensu"

    S P. - "I was working for an Insurance company and I was the lead PM responsible for delivering HIPAA 5010 835 (statement of bill claims received vs paid) transactions to healthcare providers/hospitals For this initiative as a PM, I was responsible to create and prioritize features around file creation. I collaborated with cross-functional teams, engineers, DevOps. First I conducted sessions with claims adjudication, SFTP file transfer, security, and privacy, clearinghouse, third-party vendors and ensu"See full answer

    Product Manager
    Behavioral
    +1 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    12 answers
    Video answer for 'Tell me about a time when you raised the bar.'
    +8

    "Please provide a transcript. One grasps 150 words in a video, but can grasp 250 words when reading text."

    Astro S. - "Please provide a transcript. One grasps 150 words in a video, but can grasp 250 words when reading text."See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    Behavioral
    +3 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    7 answers
    Video answer for 'Tell me about a decision you made based on your instincts.'
    +4

    "I am the Lead PM for a product that analyzes calls made by prison inmates and looks for predictors of criminal intent. its primarily used by police investigators and the FBI. One of the main features we have in the app is Link Analysis which basically lists out all the calls an inmate has made for a specific time period. This feature was built before my time. When I joined, the first thing I did was to implement analytics in the app. Looking at our numbers, I noticed that usage was less than 1%"

    Aabid S. - "I am the Lead PM for a product that analyzes calls made by prison inmates and looks for predictors of criminal intent. its primarily used by police investigators and the FBI. One of the main features we have in the app is Link Analysis which basically lists out all the calls an inmate has made for a specific time period. This feature was built before my time. When I joined, the first thing I did was to implement analytics in the app. Looking at our numbers, I noticed that usage was less than 1%"See full answer

    Security Analyst
    Behavioral
    +1 more
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    13 answers
    Video answer for 'Tell me about a time when you proposed an idea that was not agreed on.'
    +10

    "Disagreement --> persistent ---> more data insights ---> positive relationship ---> mentor/trust"

    Sam - "Disagreement --> persistent ---> more data insights ---> positive relationship ---> mentor/trust"See full answer

    Product Manager
    Behavioral
    +2 more
  • Discord logoAsked at Discord 
    11 answers
    Video answer for 'Describe a time when your project failed.'
    +7

    "I feel this is more about "Describe a time when I failed or struggled" rather than "Project Failure"."

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

    Product Manager
    Behavioral
    +3 more
  • Stripe logoAsked at Stripe 
    18 answers
    Video answer for 'What is your approach to managing poor performers on your team?'
    +15

    "This is coming from an Amazon manager who are taught to PIP people out. The first part he said is completely opposite with Amazon. They just pull people randomly into the room and put them either on dev list or PIP. This is unfortunately true for all of Amazon."

    Vikas T. - "This is coming from an Amazon manager who are taught to PIP people out. The first part he said is completely opposite with Amazon. They just pull people randomly into the room and put them either on dev list or PIP. This is unfortunately true for all of Amazon."See full answer

    Engineering Manager
    Behavioral
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    13 answers
    Video answer for 'Tell me about a time when you were dissatisfied with the status quo.'
    +10

    "There are way more learning opportunities for us here if we acknowledge that this was not a good example and provide tips on how to improve the answer. All the answers here are superficial and it is clear that the interviewee was unprepared. . The mention of quote "a wise man told me..." (instead of getting to his own personal points) and some lack of confidence with the metrics portion are red flags. . For more concrete example, it is hard to believe that no one wants to fix the slow build proc"

    Danny - "There are way more learning opportunities for us here if we acknowledge that this was not a good example and provide tips on how to improve the answer. All the answers here are superficial and it is clear that the interviewee was unprepared. . The mention of quote "a wise man told me..." (instead of getting to his own personal points) and some lack of confidence with the metrics portion are red flags. . For more concrete example, it is hard to believe that no one wants to fix the slow build proc"See full answer

    Behavioral
  • Amazon logoAsked at Amazon 
    13 answers
    Video answer for 'Tell me about a time when you improved a complex process.'
    +10

    "This is the answer I have prepared. Please let me know your comments and how I can improve the answer. I have worked on many process improvement initiatives and projects. I want to share an initiative that I led and delivered while at my previous employer. It had a great impact on over 60 programs and projects across teams in six different countries. Analysts and program managers used to generate a monthly program performance report that deals with all aspects, including schedule, risks, costs"

    Balaji G. - "This is the answer I have prepared. Please let me know your comments and how I can improve the answer. I have worked on many process improvement initiatives and projects. I want to share an initiative that I led and delivered while at my previous employer. It had a great impact on over 60 programs and projects across teams in six different countries. Analysts and program managers used to generate a monthly program performance report that deals with all aspects, including schedule, risks, costs"See full answer

    Product Manager
    Behavioral
    +2 more
Showing 1-20 of 70