Part 2/2 - How to Prepare for Meta Behavioral Interviews

Identify Stories Related to Meta’s Signal Areas

Hey, Prasad here 👋 I'm the voice behind the weekly newsletter "Big Tech Careers."

This week we continue our guest post series from Austen McDonald, a former Senior Engineering Manager and Hiring Committee Chair at Meta and now the author of the Mastering the Behavioral Interview newsletter.

Last week in Part 1, Austen McDonald shared insights about the engineering culture and leveling at Meta. He also shared about the signal areas interviewers look for during the interviews. This week in Part 2, he shares how to prepare for Meta behavioral interviews based on those signal areas and the typical questions.

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Over to you, Austen!

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Welcome back to preparing for Meta behavioral interviews! Last week, in Part 1, I covered what Meta’s engineering culture is like and how they evaluate engineers in behavioral interviews, specifically across five axes:

• Driving Results

• Embracing Ambiguity

• Resolving Conflicts

• Growing Continuously

• Communicating Effectively

We also discussed an unofficial sixth axis, which we called Scope, and what is expected from each of the most common levels of ICs and managers.

With that in mind, let’s use this information to best prepare for a Meta behavioral interview.

Preparing for a Meta Behavioral

Any quality behavioral interview guidance will be valuable when preparing for a Meta behavioral. And we encourage you to get a solid understanding of the basics before proceeding. Check out my newsletter, Mastering the Behavioral Interview, and Prasad’s newsletter, Big Tech Careers!

However, in light of Meta’s culture and evaluation methodology, here is some specific guidance.

Identify Stories Related to Meta’s Signal Areas

Since the interview most often asks questions in the form, “Tell me about a time when…,” you’ll need stories to tell.

Pick stories that demonstrate your past actions in light of Meta’s culture and the five (six) signal areas we discussed:

• Scope: Identify stories inline with the target level of the open position. Check our first post[link] on the scope of projects for each level. When you choose a “Favorite Project” (or “Most Impactful Project” or however it’s phrased), ensure your story is solidly at the target level—pushing the next level, if possible.

• Resolving Conflicts: Similarly for the “Conflict Story,” choose a conflict that’s inline with the target level. Ideally it was a conflict where you were right and deeply involved.

• Driving Results: Identify stories with a strong connection to business outcomes, where there are clearly defined metrics that guided execution. Pick projects where you initiated the work or advocated for some process change. A lot of work at Meta comes from ICs, especially engineers.

• Embracing Ambiguity: Tell stories about ambiguous projects that required clarification and planning on your part, especially if you defined the requirements and outcomes yourself. You might be asked an explicit question about those times.

• Communicating Effectively: Identify times when you used verbal or written communication and communicated to different audiences. Reflect on why those methods were right for those situations.

Growing Continuously: In your stories, show a growth mindset, like times you provided or received honest feedback and changed because of it.

Highlight Meta-relevant Aspects of Stories

Journaling about these times is the best path to framing a coherent story that communicates the actions you took and the motivations you had.

As you journal about your stories and begin to put them together using the STAR or CARL method, keep these in mind:

• Be Data Driven: Share data-driven motivations and progress with objective metrics. Similarly to how you would quantify impact on a resume, even if there were no formal metrics used in the project, see if you can find a way to talk about the impact in measurable terms (“it improved latency” even without numbers is better than no discussion of measurable outcomes).

  • “When I noticed our team’s API response times were affecting user experience, I analyzed our logs and found that 15% of requests exceeded the 200ms SLA…As I optimized, I continually reviewed both performance in testing environments and p75 numbers in production.“

• Bias Toward Impact: Describe how you were biased toward impact, minimizing “red tape,” formalistic practices, or rigid team hierarchy. Emphasize how you used point-to-point communication. Even if your environment was very top-down and communication was expected to be done only between managers, find ways to describe at least your desire to communicate directly.

  • “When we identified a critical bug in our payment processing system, rather than waiting for our next scheduled meeting with the Payments team, I messaged the lead directly and helped them brainstorm some solutions. I also looped in the manager which helped to ensure the bug was prioritized quickly. This helped us minimize the impact on the end user and preserve revenue.”

• Elaborate on Communication: Add details to the reasoning and methods you used to communicate. Many candidates gloss over details like writing up proposals or messaging a co-worker before calling a meeting, but those details do indicate something about the way you work.

  • “Before proposing the revamp of the login system, I created a one-page wireframe mockup and annotated it with the bottlenecks and three potential solutions. It included some pros and cons for each one. I shared this with the team the day before our meeting, which allowed some of the more introverted folks to review and provide some comments. Because of that, the meeting was pretty quick and we got right down to making a decision and implementing it later that afternoon.”

Odds and Ends

• Focus on Signal Areas over Values: Typical behavioral interview guides tell you to sprinkle the company’s values into your responses. Something like, “I really wanted to `Live in the Future’ so I proposed this AI feature…” This may not be the best approach at Meta, since the interviewer is measuring you against the five signal areas.

• Prepare for Interruptions: Sometimes interviewers jump from one question to another, interrupting your responses. If you get an interviewer like this, stay calm, front-load the actions and minimize context so you’re getting to the meat of the responses quickly, anticipating that you’ll be cut off.

Typical Questions

Other than the Big Three–”Tell me about yourself,” “Tell me about your favorite project,” and “Tell me about a time when you had a conflict”–I generally don’t advise candidates to prepare for specific questions. There’s just no way to know what you’ll be asked. Instead, prepare stories relevant to the five signal areas and then pair the right story with the right question during the interview.

That being said, to help you practice pairing stories with the signal areas, here are some questions I believe are representative of those you’ll receive in a Meta behavioral:

Driving Results

• Tell me about the largest scope initiative you drove that wasn't part of your primary responsibilities.

• Tell me about a time when a project was behind. What did you do?

• Give me an example of balancing planning with rapid execution?

Embracing Ambiguity

• Give me an example of a project you worked on that wasn’t well scoped when you received it.

• Tell me a time when you had to solve a complex problem.

• Tell me about a time when the requirements shifted unexpectedly.

• Tell me about a time when you had to define the success criteria of the project yourself.

Resolving Conflicts

• Tell me about a conflict you were involved with and how you responded.

• Tell me about a time when you had to get something from someone who didn’t want to give it to you?

• Tell me about a time when you had to get something from someone who didn't want to give it to you.

• In this project you’re describing, did you encounter any conflicts?

Growing Continuously

• Describe a time when you had to learn something new.

• Tell me about a technical/organization/product decision you regret.

• What is the feedback you’re been receiving recently?

• What feedback have you been giving to those around you?

Communicating Effectively

• Tell me about a time when you communicated something technical to a non-technical audience.

• Explain to me the hardest technical choice you had to make on this project.

Good Luck and Prepare Early

Meta is in the middle of the pack when it comes to companies who prioritize behavioral signals in their overall interview process–less than a place like Amazon and more than a place like Google. Despite this, don’t leave it to the last minute. Put in some time journaling about those CARL stories, aligning them with Meta signal areas, and practicing them with a friend or in a mock interview.

Here’s some parting advice for your upcoming Meta behavioral:

• Focus on Actions: Focus on those repeatable behaviors you engaged in as you worked on each of those projects. Those actions are how the interviewer is evaluating whether you have strong contributions on the five axes.

• Emphasize Business Value: In your stories, be sure to emphasize the business value and measurable impact of projects.

• Pick Appropriate Stories: Use the level discussion from the first post [link] to check your stories against the scope of the position you’re applying for.

Good luck and try to have fun. Behavioral interviews really are a place where you can let some personality shine through.

💚 Austen

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I would like to extend a big thank you to Austen McDonald for sharing his insights on Meta Behavioral Interviews with Big Tech Careers readers in this 2-part series.

• Part 1/2 - Mastering the Meta Behavioral Interview

• Part 2/2 - How to Prepare for Meta Behavioral Interviews

I also encourage you to subscribe to his newsletter Mastering the Behavioral Interview and follow him on LinkedIn for further insights.

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