Don't bury the lede when answering a behavioral question
Use the STAR format and quickly get to the point
You need to understand that time is working against you during a behavior interview. It is critical to get the interviewer to be hooked on to your answer. The worst mistake you can make is to ramble for a minute or two before getting to the point. This is the age of limited attention span and you need to adapt your strategy accordingly.
Different interviewers, have different attention spans, but you can't rely on the interviewer whom you have never met before to be the one with a longer attention span. It's safer to assume that everyone you meet have a short attention span and I can completely understand if that is truly the case.
Zip straight to the Situation
It’s a well known secret that all behavior questions should be answered in the Situation-Task-Action-Result (STAR) format. The immediate goal is to craft a strong hook so that the interviewer is invested in your answer. That hook is the mystery, or in our case, the situation. Remove all fluff when you are explaining the situation, and leave it for the time when the interviewer asks you a follow up question.
In fact, this strategy can be very effective as the background and specifics that you didn't provide might end up being the next follow up question. Take care that you provide just enough introduction and background, else the interviewer might lose interest.
Imagine a question “Tell me the most challenging project that you worked on”.
Even thought it might not look like a question for STAR format,
For this question, you can start by
“In my current company Apple, I was working on Apple Health iOS app, where we were expected to integrate the app with Hospitals, Networks, Labs online records so that users can have all their health data from all providers in one place”
We started with (a) company name (b) product name (c) the project or situation and then followed by (d) why this is important.
Explaining the impact of the project is important since it showcases why you are working on it. It showcases you understand the objective rather than just doing what you are told to do.
Move quickly to your actions
Do not spend too much time on the Situation. It just needs to be a quick opener, setting the stage for your answer.
The Task section is a quick overview of what had to be achieved. e.g.
“I had to work with public relations team to coordinate relate to the providers that would be supported and I had to coordinate with the Data Lake team to find ways to actually fetch the data”
The Task section can also contain why it was a challenging project in the first place.
The Action would be something along the lines of
“I reached out to the TPM on public relations team with a quick outline of the problem. I setup a meeting with her and 2 days before the meeting sent her the agenda of the meeting including objective of my project and the possible challenges I anticipate. In parallel, I reached out to the SDM on Data Lake team about the capabilities I am looking for. I reached out to the Security team about how to secure health data locally on the iPhone”
Wrap it up quick
Make the results sound appealing by getting to the actual numbers quickly. Some phrases that convey such numbers are
“We completed the project in 4 months, which was a month ahead of time”
“We reduced the latency from X → Y (Z% decrease) in the 4months timeperiod”
“We released the product and we saw 7% month-over-month growth of daily active users”
“We saw 7% decrease of storage usage by switching to xz compression, that translates to $900K of monthly cost savings which is 12% of the storage costs”
Attaching the $ value to the answers is an impactful method. Make sure the numbers make sense and it does not sound like you are making it up, even if the cost savings was real. It’s very hard to change the perception if the interviewer concluded that you cooked up a number to impress them.