# Behavioral Question Set 10

## Tell me a bit about your professional experience in 2-3 minutes

* This question will allow you to get an initial sense of your peer’s technical experience.
* Feel free to ask follow-up questions, for instance, can you elaborate a bit more on your experience with [specific technology] or your responsibilities at [company]? You can also use this opportunity to ask the candidate which of their experiences had the greatest impact on them.

## What are you looking for in your next role

* This is an opportunity to get insight into whether a candidate would be a good culture fit for your company. Is the candidate looking for a company of your size? Do their expectations match the role?

## What’s an example of a difficult technical problem you solved? Be specific about how the problem was diagnosed and your process for approaching it

* Owner vs participant: Many candidates will claim they led a big project or created significant impact, but if you dig deeper, you’ll find that the candidate only played a participatory role or was involved in just one facet of the project. As an interviewer, it’s your role to uncover the truth. Follow-up questions asking about who was involved, what the candidate personally did, and how they did it will help you make an informed decision about the candidate’s true impact.
* Good vs great achievements: Many candidates are good at quantifying their achievements, but you’ll want to know how big of an impact this achievement actually had. Was it a minor success or did it have a significant impact? Were the results due to the candidate’s impact, or would those results have likely occurred without their involvement? You may consider asking follow-up questions here too: try to drill down into the baseline metrics used, such as “What were the projected metrics had you not made this decision?”

## Tell me about a success you’re particularly proud of in your career and why it was a success for you

* Asking questions about a candidate’s successes can help empower them to get out of their shell.
* Apart from the actual experience, this question will also help you uncover more about their professional growth and what kind of projects the candidate enjoys working on.

## Tell me about a setback you’ve faced. How did you handle it

* This question is trying to get at the candidate’s ability to be self-aware and retrospectively self-critical. The best answers are those that indicate the setback and that introduced several possible approaches and their tradeoffs, before explaining the approach they took and its result.
* Remember that even if the candidate made an error, it doesn’t mean that they were being negligent – learning from one’s mistakes is a central element for a growth opportunity.

## Tell me something you had to learn quickly but knew nothing about

* This question is about the candidate’s ability to learn and act quickly. You can infer a good amount about candidates as they explain their previous experience with a challenging new concept by examining how confident they are in unfamiliar territory.
* As a follow-up, you can ask your peer to explain this new subject to you. Were they able to clearly and concisely explain a new concept to you? Their answer can give you insight into their mentorship potential – how well they’ll be able to pass new knowledge to their teammates.