The Google Résumé: How to Prepare for a Career and Land a Job at Apple, Microsoft, Google, or any Top Tech Company

Appendix B. Answers to Behavioral Interview Questions

There may be no "right" answer to behavioral interview questions, but there certainly are a lot of wrong answers. In this section, we'll give example responses (or discussions) for five common behavioral questions and highlight what makes these strong responses.

1. Tell me about a time when you gave a presentation to a group of people who disagreed with you.

   "In my last team, I became concerned with a decision the team was making on how to extend our small-business accounting software to personal users. My team thought that we should just create a slightly tweaked version, and I disagreed. I thought we should build a brand new piece of software, and I presented this proposal to the team.

   Most of the work I did to smooth over this presentation was actually before the presentation. I spoke with each of the key decision holders—namely, my manager, the tech lead, and a VP—prior to the meeting. I talked with them about why they felt we should do one thing versus another, and then gathered additional data based on their responses.

   Then, in the presentation, I presented the new data and focused the conversation not on convincing them, but rather on understanding what would need to happen for us to make a different decision. We had a very fruitful decision as a team, rather than anyone feeling like we were fighting. We were able to set guidelines to guide our decisions. When we reconvened the next week, I was able to show that we could hit ...