Comment by shoo
16 hours ago
I conducted a few hundred software engineering interviews while working for a non-tech corp. Aside from technical problem solving & programming interviews we'd also ask a few behavioural questions -- including asking about times where the candidate had made a mistake at work, or a time at work where they were very frustrated.
What we were looking for
- people unwilling to admit they'd ever made a mistake -- red flag
- people who could reflect on the situation and say what they'd do differently in the future
- ideally, people who could use their mistake / failure / bad situation as an example of how they then took initiative to improve things by doing blah blah blah
People who were able to give an ideal response had clearly practised for this kind of question & knew how to play this part of the interview game.
Behaviours valued by one type of potential employer may not be valued by another. Small businesses & startups might value folks who take initiative and have a bias for action. In contrast, regulated megacorps might value folks who are great at consulting stakeholders and getting buy in before making changes, and steer clear of people they believe will go off and do stuff unilaterally.
One rule of thumb for handling these kinds of behavioural questions is "STAR" -- situation, task, action, result. Use the prompt for the question as a way to pick an example, then figure out how to frame an answer that shows you doing something to improve the situation. There's a fair chance that your interviewers are trying to mash your response into a STAR format in their own notes, even if they don't hint for you to respond in this way.
Right, I'm aware, and like I said, I expect those questions, and I have several examples I'm prepared for, and can tailor it to the interviewer. Like if it was a devops role, I could talk about when I took down production and what I learned from it. Or I could talk about when I failed to properly manage a junior if the role was more management-oriented and what I learned from it. Or when I badly architected a feature, and what I learned from it, and so on.
What I _wasn't_ prepared for was 4+ of those questions in a row, and _zero_ questions about my experience, or strengths, or anything else. The questions were more of the type "when did you stop beating your wife?". In retrospect, I think the interviewer already had someone they wanted to hire, but were forced into it by HR due diligence or something.
Where I work we divide up topics and questions so we aren't all asking the same thing in an interview. This guy might have been given the "handling failures" scenario.
It's possible that's what happened here and the interviewer also just wasn't very good. Some people just really suck at interviewing.