How to Answer Behavioral Interview Questions (Best advice for S.T.A.R. stories!)
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In this video I'll teach you impress your interviewers during an interview and how to have AMAZING S.T.A.R. stories! Follow this simple step by step approach to have stories that will help you get that job!
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I'm a Senior Product Manager by day and content creator whenever I have a few minutes in the morning, day or night to spare! I have experience working in Product Management at Microsoft in AI & Machine Learning, as well as Cisco in Wireless Technologies. I'm originally from Mexico City and I moved to the U.S. in 2015 to study my MBA at Duke University. I discovered Product Management when I started Business School and since then, it has been my mission and my passion to help others break into this role!
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This video is not sponsored; all opinions shared are my own.
📝 Creating S.T.A.R. Stories from Leadership Principles Template: docs.google.com/document/d/1-...
📝 Common Behavioral questions and Amazon Leadership Principles Questions: docs.google.com/document/d/16...
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Examples of Behavioral questions:
* Tell me about a time you had to influence/convince your team to do a project when it was not part of their plan?
* Tell me about a time you used data to convince your manager of something
* Tell me about a time a customer asked you for a requirement that wasn't good for the product and how did you handle it?
* Tell me about a time you couldn't get data and you had to make a decision.
* The questions can also be very open ended
* Tell me about a time you failed
* What has been your greatest achievement?
STAR Format stands for
* Situation
* Task
* Action
* Result
- Why use it? You are telling your interviewer your story. A story that probably took weeks or months to happen - and you are trying to tell this story in a few minutes.
- One very important skill for Product Managers is communication and during an interview, Behavioral questions are a good way to assess that.
- If you feel you have been talking for too long, you probably have. Try to keep your stories between 3-4 minutes.
1) Situation
* The situation is about setting the context, it's about telling the interviewer just enough information for them to understand the rest of the story.
2) Task
* The task is a moment that you take to explain your role in the situation you described
3) Action
* This is where you will explain how the situation was resolved. Now, we tend to talk about the team and what "WE" did. If it was a team effort, focus on your role and actions YOU took during this situation. This is also where you'll spend the majority of the time.
* Make sure you also structure your answer in a way to make it easy for your interviewer to follow your story. Use lists and keywords to help your interviewer follow your story. For example: First, second, third.
4) Result
* Very briefly, mention what was the outcome of the situation. Shouldn't take long.
5) Lesson
* One extra thing you can add is a small lesson at the end. It's a nice way to recap the important skills you learned.
Common Mistakes in an interview and Behavioral questions:
* Not adding enough "I" in your story - make sure you tell what YOU did in the situation, not what the team did.
* Not being concise (I once interviewed someone who took 15 minutes to answer the first Behavioral question of the interview).
* Not having a structure - Very often I see candidates repeating themselves over and over, and going back and forth between explaining the situation and the actions they took - This usually leads to not being concise
* Not going deep - Many candidates try to tell a story that doesn't go into the details and ends up being a very short and superficial answer
* Memorizing word by word - Sounds too robotic and not natural.
#behavioralquestions #tellmeaboutatime #startstories #star #behavioral #productmanager #productmanagement #interview #career #MBA #jobsearch #technology #amazoninterview #googleinterview #microsoftinterview
Пікірлер: 65
ANOTHER really good video. Perfect explanation and presentation Diego - keep up the good work, i.e. great videos :)
the MOST useful content of behavioral questions i've watched! thanks for sharing this, Diego!
You rock, Diego! The greatest tips of all channels.
Thanks for the insights! I can tell it's all about the balance between "I" vs "We", "enough practice" vs "not memorizing word by word", "concise" vs "going deep", etc.
This is gold actually :) I was at an interview for PM at Microsoft, and I passed on to the on-site interview, but I didn't do enough preparation and I failed. One thing I learned from that interview is that clarity and preparation is absolute top-notch priority. So I am starting to prepare from your channel :)
@PMDiegoGranados
2 жыл бұрын
I’m sorry to read that! I hope that your next interview goes better!! Keep me posted
Loved the breakdown and your way of storytelling. This is extremely helpful! Thank you Diego!
@PMDiegoGranados
3 жыл бұрын
Thank you Aishwarya! I’m glad you found it useful :) it’s all about how you tell your story and make sure you transmit the message in a great way!
DG, this is solid!! If I don’t get the second interview at Amazon though, you owe me at least one interview at MSFT 😉
I was very frustated looking for answers to unasked questions .. you have answered most of them. You are the best! Subscribed!
@PMDiegoGranados
2 жыл бұрын
Thanks for the sub!
Thank you for this insightful breakdown Diego! I'm definitely more prepared for my interviews now!
@PMDiegoGranados
3 жыл бұрын
Thank you, Sameen! I’m glad you feel much more prepared. Best of luck in your interviews!
Thank you so much for this, Diego! :) It really helped me plan out communicating my stories better.
@PMDiegoGranados
3 жыл бұрын
That’s awesome @Namratha! I’m glad that it helped!!! Keep me posted on your interviews!
I’ve been studying for my Interview for a little while man and genuinely feel like one video I watched with you was better then the Conclusion I would draw from other videos gracias for la ayuda hermano
@PMDiegoGranados
2 жыл бұрын
Glad I could help!
thanks diego
Very nice and interesting way of explanation
I've been looking for an answer regarding my behavioral interview preparation strategy for the last few days and thank god I stumbled upon your channel. You've answered exactly what I wanted to know & understand. Plus I love how you deliver such great content so calmly. I'm so used to hearing 'passionate' voices on youtube, though that's great too.I like yours better. Thanks a lot again! :)
@PMDiegoGranados
2 жыл бұрын
Thank you, Surbhi! I’m glad that you like my channel :) if you have any suggestions or feedback, they are always welcome!
@surbhigupta2910
2 жыл бұрын
@@PMDiegoGranados I'll surely share suggestions/feedback once I view all of your videos :)
Awesome learning, Diego
@PMDiegoGranados
3 жыл бұрын
Thank you 🤗! I'm glad that you liked the video!
Thanks, Diego! Love your videos! Really very helpful, even if one is looking at a job in Amazon for a role other than product specifically.
@PMDiegoGranados
2 жыл бұрын
Glad it was helpful!
@MrAbhimanyuk
2 жыл бұрын
@@PMDiegoGranados, wanted to thank you once again! Starting at Amazon shortly thanks to your content!
Great video Diego! Do you have any tips for interviewees coming from entrepreneurship background? My most prominent projects involved hiring developers myself and giving them specifications of what to build, so it's hard to speak about "motivating" them, as their main motivation was the salary I paid them :) I have good stories that demonstrate traits like ownership, customer obsession, conflicts with business parties, and hard decisions, but due to my background I don't have substantial stories about "teams", such as "influencing without authority". I did had two smaller projects that involved a team, but those project were shorter and did not succeed, so I didn't even mention them in my resume. I can speak about them as failures that I learned from, but as a team we didn't continue working together (as it was a joint venture with a single objective), so I can't say it later led for "better" team work. For the same reasons, it's hard for me to find any good example of getting a "negative" feedback and demonstrate what I did in order to become "better" next time, as there wasn't a next time. I'm not sure how I will be looked upon in these circumstances compared to candidates who have more substantial "team" stories since they worked in a more "traditional" setting like a company.
Thank you Diego. Very helpful video.
@PMDiegoGranados
2 жыл бұрын
Glad it was helpful!
You were great! I am from Israel and I have the first time Interview in English with the Director of Product in Boston, I have learned a lot and I am going to prepare some success stories using the S.T.A.R method.
@PMDiegoGranados
3 жыл бұрын
Thanks for watching and best of luck in your interviews!
@89Kevinnash
2 жыл бұрын
@barak are you in the US now ? can you tell me how you got an interview call from a company in the US while being in Israel ? Are there not any work permit issues ?
The best part of your videos are the break downs. All other videos in youtube related to this field only provide superficial answers.
@PMDiegoGranados
2 жыл бұрын
Thank you, Soumen! I’m glad you like my content!!
I wish your audio is bit more loud, it is also low in many other videos of yours. My volume is max, but couldn't help much. Content is great, Thanks, pls make them a bit louder. Kudos!!
Consice, resourceful and straight to the points everyone must be prepared, thank you so much Diego, awesome way to be well prepared and crushed it on behavioural questions!
@PMDiegoGranados
2 жыл бұрын
Thank you, Roberto!! I’m glad that you enjoyed the video!
Thanks Diego. This is really helpful.In my last interview I got the feedback that I have very lengthy answers. Learning I got to take a pause for 7-12 seconds will help to gather your thoughts and structure it.
@PMDiegoGranados
3 жыл бұрын
I'm glad you found this video useful! Best of luck with your upcoming interviews and reach out if you have any questions :)
@bestofalltime-boat5992
3 жыл бұрын
@@PMDiegoGranados Hi Diego, Trust you are doing great!!! In the prioritisation questions how do you estimate the value and effort for a feature or story?
@PMDiegoGranados
3 жыл бұрын
For an interview you can use different frameworks. For example RICE is a popular one and state your assumptions. Let’s say that in your case question your “company” develops software... if one of your solutions is to implement hardware like VR headset, then effort will be high because you don’t have the expertise. You don’t have to always use a framework (like RICE), but you can fall back to the goal, the impact and your best estimate of time to implement. What I mean by that is that you can think of: if we want to maximize user satisfaction, then feature A will have the most impact and while it can be complex to implement, it will help us maximize our objective (user satisfaction). Real life is a different story! But in a case question, it’s about assumptions and giving a good reason to WHY you are prioritizing that way
@PMDiegoGranados
3 жыл бұрын
If you are curious about how it works in real life let me know and I can help with that too :)
@bestofalltime-boat5992
3 жыл бұрын
@@PMDiegoGranados My thought: please correct me, RICE framework works well for the products already in the use because you will get a lot of data related to interaction between customer and the product. In which stage the product is also matter a lot e.g. recently launched, very less customer currently, introduction, growth, maturity and decline etc
Thanks Diego! Can you do videos on different type of product questions and how to answer them?
@PMDiegoGranados
3 жыл бұрын
Thank you for your suggestion, Agnes! I definitely will! I’m currently working on figuring out what’s the best way to explain it in a video, so there will definitely be videos about answering product questions.
@krnchicki
3 жыл бұрын
@@PMDiegoGranados thanks Diego!
Hi, Diego. I love your videos. They are pure gold. I have a question for you: what is the interviewer trying to learn when she asks "tell me about a decision you made with very limited information"? How should we approach the answer? Do you have any example? Many thanks. Saludos desde Españña.
@PMDiegoGranados
2 жыл бұрын
Buena pregunta! When they ask “tell me about a decision made with limited information” they are trying to assess how good are you at understanding: 1. In an imperfect world, what other resources did you use when you didn’t have data? But check? Check with the team? Experiment? (How resourceful are you?) 2. Did you try to get more data? Why couldn’t you get it? (How diligent are you?) Use the same STAR format! I don’t have an example yet
Although STAR framework is not new, the way you communicate it is excellent. You make it look easy :) Do you think ending with a summary helps ? may be "STARS" - the last "S" for "Summary ?
@PMDiegoGranados
2 жыл бұрын
I don’t see a problem with that, but I’ll tell you where I’m concerned… if you give the full STAR story AND then a summary, you might be taking way too much time for it 🤔 I guess if you can bring it down to 1 min summary should be fine? I’m not sure, I’ve always ended with “Lesson” and interviewers like it
Hi Diego, I think earlier you had a link to about 50 different Behavioral questions, do I Remember correctly? I think it was on your website, but I can't find the link :/
I am so disappointed that I am paying for a PM course. But I'm so happy that I landed on your channel and I'm obsessed about it now. Fun fact: I shared your channel within the Cohort 😛 more power to you D! 😘
@PMDiegoGranados
2 жыл бұрын
You are very kind, @Vinit! Hahaha thank you! Hey, I’d love to chat with you about your experience in that course if you are up for it 😊 If you’d like to, please send me a message on linkedin!
Hi, Mr. Diego how should I break down the interview at Microsoft for individual contributor role
@PMDiegoGranados
2 жыл бұрын
Here you go 😉 What is the Microsoft Interview process like? (With sample questions!) kzread.info/dash/bejne/eYZopZesnpS6cps.html
@thungaestherrani4787
2 жыл бұрын
Is this process is same for freshers
@PMDiegoGranados
2 жыл бұрын
@@thungaestherrani4787 yes! Same one 😊
@thungaestherrani4787
2 жыл бұрын
Thank you
@PMDiegoGranados
2 жыл бұрын
@@thungaestherrani4787 yes! :)