Top Facebook Behavioral Interview Questions - Part 1

Have you ever wondered which questions usually come up in Behavioral Interviews at Facebook?

Before we discuss the top questions, let us understand what the Behavioral Interview Round is.

• Behavioral Interview Round is also known as the Jedi Interview round at Facebook.
• It is about you and your history, your résumé, and your motivation.
• The purpose of this interview is to assess whether the candidate will thrive in Facebook’s peer-to-peer, minimal process, and unstructured engineering organization.

For Software Engineers, the behavioral interview is actually part behavioral and part coding. The coding part is a shorter version of the usual coding interviews and is included to supplement the other two coding interviews to get an additional coding signal.

Tips & Tricks to effectively prepare for Behavioral Interviews

1. Know yourself! Take the time to review your résumé, as the interviewer will almost certainly ask about key events in your work history.
2. Have concrete examples or anecdotes to support each of the questions.
3. Familiarize yourself with Facebook’s mission statement and its five core values:
     —  Be Bold
     —  Focus on Impact
     —  Move Fast
     —  Be Open
     —  Build Social Value
4. Be yourself! Be open and honest about your successes and failures.
5. Be humble and focus on teamwork, leadership, and mentorship qualities.

Now let us review the top behavioral questions which are usually asked at Facebook.

Question 1: Tell me about a time you disagreed with someone

This is one of the most frequent questions asked in behavioral interviews.

Interviewers also tend to ask this famous question in the following ways:

• Tell me about a time you had a conflict with your manager.

• Share a situation where you faced a conflict at work.

• Have you ever worked with a difficult person?

• Describe a situation where two teams disagreed on a path forward.

• Tell me about a time you had a communication problem with a coworker.

Evaluation Criteria

Having conflicts is a part of everyone’s career journey. By this question, the interviewer is trying to evaluate you on the following:

1. Assess how you work in difficult situations or unstructured environments.
2. Judge your maturity level, communication skills, and willingness to speak up irrespective of your coworker’s seniority.
3. Evaluate whether you are empathetic and respectful towards your colleagues while trying to understand your coworker’s motivations and viewpoints behind the conflict.
4. A crucial element to this question is that the interviewer is looking for a positive resolution of the conflict that benefits the company and not just an individual.
5. Interviewers are trying to see if you are flexible to compromise.
6. And open to learning from challenging experiences.

Question 2: Tell me about a time you showed leadership

Candidates often get asked in the behavior interviews to tell about a time when they showed leadership in their workplace.

Evaluation Criteria

Using this question, the interviewers are looking to evaluate you on various attributes like:

• Taking responsibility

• Having confidence

• Strong communication skills

• Relationship-building skills

They want to understand what leadership means to you and see if you have ever taken the initiative to lead something at your current or past workplaces. For example:

• Heading up an entire project

• Mentoring a junior engineer

• Proposing an alternate design to an existing problem

• Onboarding a new engineer

• Stepping up to fix an unexpected issue

They want to know that you can lead with good judgment at times when leadership is required within the team or company.

Question 3: Tell me about a time you failed or made a mistake

Tell me about a time you failed or made a mistake is one of the most challenging and tricky questions asked by the interviewers. 

Don’t be afraid of this question. Mistakes and failures are inevitable, and everyone makes them at some point during their job.

Evaluation Criteria

Through this question, the interviewer is trying to understand your level of maturity and personal accountability.

They want to see how do you handle the situation when you experience a setback. 

They are looking for candidates who:

• Can take ownership of their actions,

• Are self-aware, and

• Strive to improve themselves using the learnings of their past experiences.

Question 4: Tell me about the project that you are most proud of

Another popular behavioral interview question is: "Tell me about the project that you are most proud of."

Evaluation Criteria

Through this question, the interviewer is trying to assess whether your core skills and work ethics align with the company’s culture or not.

They are also trying to get a reading on how you define professional success.

Your answer should focus on the project’s impact and outcomes, as this will demonstrate to the interviewer what you consider important and how you get things done.

Question 5: Tell me about a time you had to manage conflicting priorities

Time management is a crucial part of everyone’s career. Interviewers often ask candidates to tell about a time when they had to manage conflicting or shifting priorities at their workplace.

Evaluation Criteria

Everyone deals with conflicting priorities and shifting deadlines in their jobs.

1. The interviewer’s goal is to evaluate:
     —  How you manage your time,
     —  Exercise judgment,
     —  Communicate, and 
     —  Shift gears when needed.
2. They want to know if you can handle competing priorities and understand the implications of missing deadlines.
3. The interviewers are trying to assess whether you can work under challenging situations or unstructured environments and distinguish between the urgent and the important.
4. They are also looking to see if your coworkers can rely on you to get the work done.

Question 6: Tell me about yourself

A common question asked by the interviewers at the start of the behavioral interviews is: "Tell me about yourself."

Evaluation Criteria

1. This introductory question helps the interviewers in one of their primary goals, which is to get to know you.
   
2. Interviewers try to learn various aspects about you from:
     —  Your current and past experiences,
     —  Your core strengths, 
     —  Your personality, and
     —  Your ability to respond to an unstructured question.
   
3. They also notice how well you can connect with your colleagues and communicate your ideas clearly and effectively.

Question 7: Why do you want to leave your current role?

Interviewers often ask the question in behavioral interviews, why are you leaving your current role?

Evaluation Criteria

Through this question, the interviewer is trying to understand your intrinsic motivation to check whether you are running away from something or running towards something.

It is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate to the interviewer that you are someone who looks forward with a positive attitude in general.

Question 8: Do you have any questions for me?

The interviewers often asked a critical question towards the end of the behavioral interviews: “Do you have any questions for me?”

Evaluation Criteria

This question helps the interviewer to gauge your passion and interest in the current role you are applying for.

It would be best to frame your questions specific to the role and the company you are interviewing for. This will help demonstrate to the interviewer that you have done your homework about their company and culture.

It also gives you an opportunity to end the interview on a strong note.

Resources

Video explanation with Evaluation Criteria, Response Framework, and Tips & Tricks to effectively prepare and answer the above questions in the interview. Certain special cases are also discussed which are usually faced by the candidates during these interviews.

This article is part one of the series on Behavioral Interviews at Facebook. Stay tuned for Part 2. Thanks for reading!

📸 Some images used are from freepik.com - Freepik, pch.vector, vectorjuice, pikisuperstar, rawpixel.com, slidesgo, stories, Upklyak, jcomp