Behavioral Interviews CheatSheet
Behavioral Interviews CheatSheet
Keywords List important keywords that will be populated with your personal
stories. Most common keywords are given in the table below
Conflict Compromise to
Negotiation Creativity Flexibility Convincing
Resolution achieve goal
Another team Adjust to a
Handling Challenging Working with
priorities not colleague Take Stand
Crisis Situation difficult people
aligned style
Handling –ve Coworker Working with a Your Influence
Your strength
feedback view of you deadline weakness Others
Handling Converting Decision
Handling Conflict Mentorship/
unexpected challenge to without enough
failure Resolution Leadership
situation opportunity data
Stories
1. List all the organizations you have been a part of. For example
1. Academia: BSc, MSc, PhD
2. Industry: Jobs, Internship
3. Societies: Cultural, Technical, Sports
2. Think of stories from step 1 that can fall into one of the keywords categories. The
more stories the better. You should have at least 10-15 stories.
3. Create a summary table by assigning multiple keywords to each stories. This will help
you filter out the stories when the question asked in the interview. An example can be
seen below
Story 1: [Convincing] [Take Stand] [influence other]
Story 2: [Mentorship] [Leadership]
Story 3: [Conflict resolution] [Negotiation]
Story 4: [decision-without-enough-data]
STAR Format
Write down the stories in the STAR format as explained in the 2/4 part of this cheat
sheet. This will help you practice the organization of story in a meaningful way.
Example: “Tell us about a time when you had to convince senior executives”
S
“I worked as an intern in XYZ company in
Situation the summer of 2019. The project details
provided to me was elaborative. After
Explain the situation and some initial brainstorming, and research I
realized that the project approach can be
provide necessary context for modified to make it more efficient in
terms of the underlying KPIs. I decided to
your story. talk to my manager about it.”
T
Task approach and how it could improve the
KPIs. I was able to convince him. He
Explain the task and your asked me if I will be able to present my
proposed approach for approval in front of
responsibility in the the higher executives. I agreed to it. I was
working out of the ABC(city) office and
situation the executives need to fly in from
XYZ(city) office.”
A
executives to know better about their area
of expertise so that I can convince them
Walk through the steps and accordingly. I prepared an elaborative 15
slide presentation starting with explaining
actions you took to address their approach, moving onto my proposed
the issue approach and finally comparing them on
preliminary results.
R
was better than the initial one. The
executives proposed a few small changes
State the outcome of the to my approach and really appreciated my
result of your actions stand. At the end of my internship, I was
selected among the 3 out of 68 interns
who got to meet the senior vice president
of the company over lunch.”
How to
2 Based on all the organizations you have been a part of,
think of all the stories that fall under the keywords above
for the 3 Practice each story using the STAR format. You will have
to answer the question following this format.