Great teams are built on more than just technical skills. Think of building a team like assembling a band: technical skills are the instruments, but how well everyone plays together determines the music. To find engineers who will thrive in your environment, you need to understand how they’ve performed in real situations and whether their working style matches your team’s values. Behavioral interviews help you move beyond surface-level impressions and make confident, evidence-based hiring decisions.

In this lesson, you’ll learn how to:

• Ask questions that reveal how candidates have handled real engineering challenges, so you can see how they apply their skills under pressure
• Listen for clues about their approach to teamwork, feedback, and growth, helping you understand how they’ll interact and improve within your team
• Spot patterns in their stories that signal strong performance and culture fit, giving you confidence in your hiring decisions

Behavioral questions focus on what someone actually did — not just what they would do. Instead of asking, “How would you handle a tight deadline?”, try, “Tell me about a time you had to deliver a project under a tight deadline.” This shift encourages candidates to share specific, real-life examples, giving you a window into their true working style.

Think of behavioral questions as putting on a special lens that helps you see:

• Real actions: How candidates apply their skills in actual situations
• Patterns: How they approach challenges, work with others, and adapt
• Authenticity: Whether you’re hearing genuine experience or just textbook answers

Examples of strong behavioral questions:

• “Describe a time you debugged a tricky production issue. What steps did you take, and what was the result?”
• “Can you share an example of working through a disagreement with a teammate? How did you handle it, and what did you learn?”

Listen closely to the stories that emerge. Pay attention not just to what the candidate did, but how they describe their process, how they involve others, and what they took away from the experience. These details will help you understand how they make decisions, collaborate, and grow from challenges.

Culture fit isn’t about hiring people who are all the same. It’s about finding those who will succeed and contribute positively to your team’s unique environment — and sometimes, that means bringing in new perspectives that fill existing blind spots. Behavioral interviews help you spot this by focusing on:

• How candidates describe working with others (“we” vs. “I”)
• Whether they give credit to teammates or take it all themselves
• Their attitude toward feedback and learning from mistakes

For example, a response like, “When our team disagreed, I listened to everyone’s ideas and helped us find a compromise,” signals openness and collaboration. In contrast, “I just did it my way because I knew I was right,” may suggest a poor fit for a team-oriented culture.

Here’s how this might sound in a real interviewer debrief:

• Natalie: What did you think about Alex’s response to the question about team conflict?
• Ryan: I liked that Alex described how they listened to everyone’s ideas before suggesting a solution. It showed real collaboration.
• Natalie: I noticed that too. Alex used “we” a lot and gave credit to the team for the project’s success.
• Ryan: Exactly. That’s a good sign for our culture, since we value teamwork and open communication.
• Natalie: Agreed. I also appreciated how Alex talked about learning from feedback after the project wrapped up.

Natalie and Ryan are looking for evidence of collaboration, openness, and a growth mindset—key indicators of both past performance and culture fit.

As you listen to candidate stories, keep an ear out for both positive signals and potential red flags.

Positive signals:

• Taking ownership of mistakes (“I missed a deadline, but I communicated early and worked with my team to recover.”)
• Supporting teammates and sharing credit
• Adapting quickly to change

Red flags:

• Blaming others for failures (“The project failed because my teammates didn’t do their part.”)
• Avoiding responsibility (“I don’t really remember any challenges; things usually go smoothly for me.”)
• Getting defensive about feedback

One negative story doesn’t always mean a bad fit, but repeated patterns matter. Weigh these signals in context and focus on real examples to make confident, evidence-based decisions about both performance and culture fit.

When you focus on real examples and listen for both positive signals and red flags, you’ll make stronger, more confident hiring decisions. Use these strategies to dig beneath the surface and truly understand how a candidate will perform and fit within your team. Next, you’ll put these skills into practice in real-world scenarios. Get ready to sharpen your instincts and build your confidence as an interviewer.