Behavioral Questions
https://careers.google.com/how-we-hire/#step-self-reflection
https://about.google/philosophy/
- Positivity
- Sense of humor
- Respect and inclusivity
- Lifelong learning
- Humbleness
- Supportive team player
- Conscientiousness and ethics
- Describe your Work style
- Organizational skills
- Individual vs team work
- Project management skills
- Efficiency and attention to details
Questions
- Tell me about a time you had to take hard feedback.
(- Generally better to choose a story that’s more recent). (- Good to point out how you improved out of this).
- Be humble, positive, conscientious, and take it in stride.
- Tell me about a time you improved a process.
(+ Improving Wiki Notes). (- Probably better to quantify it).
- Talk about the best interests of stakeholders and colleagues
- Monitored the result of the new process
- Enthusiasm to improve
- Tell me about a time you were tasked to do the impossible. How did you do it?
(+ How did you work extra in the same time frame?) (- Working extra/on the weekends + long days isn’t that great). (+ Probably better to be clearer on tasks/description).
- Be a team player to keep people in the loop, and focus on learning/mentorship.
- Tell me about a time you received mentorship. What did you learn from it? What would you like to continue to learn?
(+ Probably better to point out some takeaways, it’s important to spread and delegate the work + grow the team).
- Shows if they work well in a team, and how much they care about learning.
- A project keeps slipping past deadlines. What do you do?
(+ Ask questions for why the project is slipping, and create a process to keep stakeholders in the loop.)
- Ask for details about why the project is slipping past deadlines. Work with stakeholders to resolve problems. Be respectful of other teams, but take it in stride.
- How would you deal with the case where there are lots of dependencies on other projects code?
- (Make sure to communicate with stakeholders + why the feature was being slowly deployed.)
- You are given the choice to make a product more efficient at the expense of accessibility. Which do you choose to do?
(+ Good to ask a clarifying question) (- Is it a management question? Accessibility is important for all sites). (- I would say that we should require accessibility, we understand the requirements of our users).
- Do they value being inclusive? What matters? Ask clarifying questions.
- Tell me about a time you had to leave a task unfinished. What did you do?
(+ Left a faulty certificate on a staging server). (+ Had to leave a lot of tickets open which counts against our team). (+ What would happen if something major happened which was customer facing)? (- I think its bad to mention that staging/dev should be broken, since it helps to debug some more important issues). (+ Communicate + prioritize).
- Explain the cost of leaving tasks unfinished.
- Tell me about a time you had to deliver a harsh truth to a coworker. How did you do it and why?
(+ Teaching a coworker about testing better instead of doing a brute force solution). (- Probably better to have a stronger story).
- Tell me about a time where you had to defend an unpopular decision. Why did you do it? What was the impact of that decision?
(+ Why are old web components bad? Why is server-side rendered bad? We weren’t familiar with the codebase isn’t a great reason.) (+ Highlighting wins that happened from using a more familiar web framework). (- Would like more detail about quantifying it).
- Tell me about a time where you made a product better for the user. What was the feature and why was it important?
(+ Infinitely loading loop). (+ Adding error handling + error pages, + better accessibility for our users). (+ Analytics would be useful to tell a story).