Part 4 · 1 chapters · ~8 min

Behavioural and Leadership

What behavioural rounds score at senior and staff level, the STAR structure weighted towards actions, a bank of eight reusable stories, influence without authority, conflict, failure, ambiguity, growing others, quantifying results, follow-up questions to expect, and avoiding the common traps (we instead of I, no result, blaming others).

5

Stories with decisions and numbers

code
STORY: influence without authority (adapt for "conflict", "ambiguity")
S  Payout failures were 310 support tickets/month; three teams owned three rail integrations differently.
T  No one owned the cross-team problem; I was a senior engineer on one of the three teams.
A  - Pulled 6 months of failures from the warehouse and tagged causes: 70% from inconsistent retries/reconciliation
   - Wrote a 2-page strategy (diagnosis, policy, actions); reviewed 1:1 with each team lead before any meeting
   - Proposed my team build the shared adapter first, so others adopted something working, not a mandate
   - When one lead objected (their roadmap was full), offered to migrate their rail ourselves
R  Two rails migrated in a quarter; failures down 58%; reconciliation became a launch gate for new rails.
   Learned: pre-wiring 1:1s made the review meeting a formality.

Expect follow-ups: "What would you do differently?", "What did the person who disagreed think?", "How did you measure that?" Interviewers dig until they find the edge of what you personally did; prepare the details.

EIGHT STORIES THAT COVER MOST QUESTIONS
prepare these once; adapt them to each question
biggest impactA project you led end to end, witha number at the end.influence without authorityGetting other teams to changecourse.conflictA real disagreement, how it wasresolved, what you learned.failureSomething that went wrong becauseof you, and what changed after.ambiguityAn unclear problem you turned intoa plan.growing othersMentoring, raising a team's bar,delegating.
swipe the figure sideways, or tap expand for full screen
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STAR, with a twist
Situation and task briefly (20%), actions in detail (60%), result with numbers (20%). Say "I" for what you did; interviewers score your decisions, not the team's.
actions are 60% of the story"I", not "we"