While getting ready for an interview, one of the hardest tasks is preparing for common behavioral interview questions that you might be asked. You might know your resume like the back of your hand and your familiarity with your top skillsets might make it a breeze to list during an interview, but behavioral questions have the potential to catch you off guard. Even if you look at behavioral interview questions examples online, just glancing at them is rarely enough to answer the question comfortably. If you want to learn how to answer behavioral interview questions with ease, then it’s essential to personalize your responses and plan for how you would answer them yourself.
Common Behavioral Interview Questions You Should Prepare For
Most of the top behavioral interview questions are common for a reason—they give the interviewer an idea of how prepared you are for the interview. More importantly, they give the interviewer a good understanding of your approach to situations and your understanding of how to overcome them. If an interviewer asks you about a recent conflict and how you overcame it, they’re not necessarily looking for an innovative approach right off the bat. These common behavioral interview questions will help them understand the kind of experiences you’ve dealt with, your attitude towards the problem, whether you handed off the blame or took responsibility yourself, etc.
Instead of getting worked up about providing them with a unique idea they’ve never heard of before, it’s more important to know how to answer the behavioral interview questions with a response showcasing who you are. So when you’re looking up the best behavioral interview questions the internet has to offer, consider why each question is being asked and respond with that reasoning as your guide. A useful technique to frame your answer is to remember the STAR method—situation, task, action, and result. Explain the situation simply without overindulging in detail, indicate the issues you had to address, go over how you responded to the situation, and finally explain the results to them.
Image: Freepik
Let’s look at some sample answers for behavioral interview questions you might be asked at your next interview.
1. Have you ever made a mistake at work that got you into trouble? Could you tell us how you handled it?
Interviewers rarely expect you to bring up the worst mistake of your career and delve into how it broke your spirit entirely. Even if you haven’t made any groundbreaking errors at work where you rose from the ashes like a phoenix, it’s best to at least mention a minor experience rather than dismiss the question. Saying “I don’t have any such experiences” is not ideal. Instead, focus on the last error you made, the consequences you faced, how you fixed it, and what you learnt from the experience. It’s the solution-focused approach that matters.
Sample Answers for the Behavioral Interview Question:
There have been a few moments like that but one that stands out to me right now is an incident which occurred when I’d just joined my previous job. I was still a little nervous about asking questions back then, so when a client brief came in and there were a few details I didn’t understand, I looked it up instead of asking my manager for an explanation. Unfortunately, that backfired because the expectations from the assignment were quite different from what I had done.
We had a very narrow deadline but thankfully my manager caught the error before I reached out to the client. We had to work overtime to rectify the error. The guidelines were explained to me again so I could rework the project but with supervision this time. To this day, I’m very grateful to my manager for giving me a second chance—it was a lesson in both communication and leadership for me. Since then, I always have a face-to-face conversation with my client to clarify all facets of every brief I receive, and I make it a point to ask questions when I don’t understand something. It’s better to learn sooner rather than later.
2. Have you ever had to disagree with a client or customer about an assignment? How did that go?
With common behavioral interview questions like this, it is best to focus on a minor confrontation rather than an incident where things went dramatically wrong. It’s also ideal to avoid badmouthing the client as it sets a bad precedent for your work ethic, even if the client was in the wrong. Be calm and explain the situation clinically rather than emotionally.
Sample Answers for the Behavioral Interview Question:
Yes, there have been instances where I’ve had to disagree with a client or customer about an assignment. One particular example that comes to mind is when a client requested a significant change to the project scope that I believed would compromise the quality and timeline of the deliverables. We would have had to redo a significant section of the project and while that would be possible, unless the timeline was changed, the quality checks and editing stage of the assignment would not be able to proceed. The client was determined that it was the best course of action.
I discussed the matter with my seniors before I put my idea before the client to ensure they knew about the issue and how I wanted to approach it. I then provided the client with a sample of the changes they wanted along with a sample of the work we had completed with the original guidelines in mind. This was enough to convince them that compromising on the quality was not how we wanted to proceed. We involved the design team and, within one meeting, we were able to come up with a stopgap solution to meet the immediate deadline. Meanwhile, the client was able to extend the final deadline for the complete file transfer. In the end, the client was happy with how things worked out. They’ve come back to work with us multiple times since, so I consider it to have been a successful project in the end.
3. We believe leadership skills are important no matter what your role. Have you ever had to lead a team or take charge and guide your colleagues towards a goal?
The question might seem overwhelming at first glance, but all behavioral interview question examples usually are. Again, you don’t have to use a groundbreaking example if you don’t have one. Focus your response on the decisions you made as a leader and what you learnt from taking on the responsibility.
Sample Answers for the Behavioral Interview Question:
I agree entirely, leadership skills are critical in any role and you never know when you might have to take charge. One of my early leadership experiences began in an unfortunate way. We were in the middle of a critical project for a client and had a very time-bound deadline to work with. Due to an unexpected complication with their health, our team leader had to take a leave of absence which left us a little disoriented. All the other senior members of the organization already had pressing deadlines to work with so we were left without a leader. We tried to make it work but we were so used to someone coordinating our daily goals that we were struggling to keep up with each other now.
I suggested we have a meeting at the end of the day to plan the next day’s agenda, which turned out to be quite successful. I took charge of organizing the meetings and following up on our discussions every day. It became my job to lead the conversation when it came to communicating with other departments and the client. Eventually, I was officially asked to lead the team for the rest of the project. Until then, I hadn’t realized the full scope of responsibilities that came with such a role so this was eye-opening. There were a few times I faltered when it came to balancing my own assignments with the responsibilities our team lead was handling, but after the first few days, I was able to schedule tasks much more easily. It was a great learning experience for me and I was even allowed to lead my own projects following that one so I’m glad I decided to take the initiative that day.
4. We want to know about one of the highlights in your career so far—A project or assignment that was a defining moment for you.
It can be tricky determining how to answer behavioral interview questions like this where you have to speak positively about yourself without boasting about your achievements. It’s good to be honest in such situations and focus your energy on why that moment was important to you rather than how many compliments you received or how many people praised you. Try to focus on why and how the moment impacted your career.
Sample Answers for the Behavioral Interview Question:
One of the defining moments in my career was when I was asked to lead a cross-functional team for a new project division at our company. It was a demanding task and I had to work with multiple departments with a cross-section of experts, those I had always admired at the organization and outside of it. Not only did I get to learn from them but I was able to present my ideas to them as well. We had to understand the market and various intricate details while we designed our campaign but it all culminated in a very successful launch.
Never before had I been as proud of my work as I was then. I was grateful that the company had appreciated my abilities enough to give me that responsibility, and I was also able to prove to myself that no task was too big if I put my mind to it. After all those hours of diving into the product, understanding our customers, negotiating bottom lines, and taking a stand for the vision I had for our launch, it was rewarding to see our work come to life.
5. Can you tell us about a time when you had to adapt to some unprecedented circumstances at work? How did you process the experience and what are some of the changes you had to make?
Among all the top behavioral interview questions you could be asked, this is one of the best ones. Our reason for saying this is that you will likely have an infinite list of experiences you can pull from to answer this question. Colleagues come and go, company policies change, shifting from job to job involves learning new tasks, industry standards require you to adapt to them, etc. Change is constant and you should be able to pick from any of these instances in order to formulate a satisfactory answer.
Focus on an incident that had a lot of challenges so you can turn everyone’s attention to what you did to overcome them.
Sample Answers for the Behavioral Interview Question:
Our company went through a major round of layoffs last year and it was a tough time for everyone at the organization. While I was grateful that I was able to hold on to my role, watching colleagues and seniors leave was hard on us too. We had no time to think about their absence though, and had to focus all our energy on taking up their roles instead. Relearning the scope of my responsibilities was quite a task, but I approached every department I was now associated with to get a clear understanding of what they expected from me. That gave me a good idea of what my upcoming tasks were going to be.
I also had to take on a few client-facing tasks I was not trained for so far, which was quite challenging. I no longer had any immediate seniors in a similar role whom I could seek advice from so I reached out to the media team instead and worked on my communication skills with them when I had the time. That was very helpful for me because it gave me a better idea of our social image and what I should or should not bring up in front of a client. The post-layoff period also taught me a lot about time management and leaving room for unexpected tasks because I had to start prioritizing responsibilities and leaving a little room for the more unplanned assignments that came up during that time. That was a particularly tricky phase in my career but I did learn a lot.
These common behavioral interview questions are only the beginning but despite the extensive variety, they all follow a similar pattern of trying to understand your experiences and your approach to work situations. Try to be calm and focus on giving the interviewer an honest but positively inclined summary of the experience—that should be a great start to getting the answer to these behavioral interview questions right every time.