What Really Makes Interviewers Remember You

How Strong Behavioral Stories Can Outweigh a Weak Technical Round

Hey, Prasad here 👋 I’m the voice behind the weekly newsletter “Big Tech Careers.”

In this week’s article, I share why mastering behavioral skills helps you overcome any gaps/lapses in technical knowledge during the interview process at Big Tech.

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You’re 30 minutes into your Big Tech interview, and it’s not going well. The technical question has you stumped. You need hints just to get a working solution. You can feel the opportunity slipping away.

But here’s the truth that most candidates don’t realize: your interview isn’t over yet. And the behavioral portion might be exactly what saves you.

A recent LinkedIn post from a Principal Software Engineer at Atlassian and former Senior Engineer at Microsoft, has sparked an important conversation about what truly matters in technical hiring. His story is a masterclass in challenging candidate assumptions!

Let’s have a read at the post “as is” before diving deep into it!

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30 minutes into the interview, I had mentally moved on from this candidate. He was almost a no-hire, but 6 months later, he became one of the best engineers on the team we ever had.

During the interview, his DSA solution was barely functional. He needed constant hints just to get a working answer.

I was ready to mark him as a “no hire.”

But then came our debrief meeting.

My teammate, who handled behavioral questions, spoke up: “Wait, can we talk about this candidate more?”

She pulled up her notes. His answers were great. They were structured, thoughtful, and showed real leadership experience.

He actually understood how to communicate complex situations.

One answer stuck with me: He described resolving a conflict between two engineers on his team. The way he handled it showed empathy, decisiveness, and maturity.

I realized something. In my 12 years of engineering, I’ve seen dozens of people learn algorithms in 3-6 months.

But teaching someone to lead? To communicate clearly under pressure? To navigate team dynamics?

That takes years. Sometimes it never happens.

We hired him.

Six months later, he became one of our strongest team members. He made everyone around him better.

I learned to stop overweighing technical gaps that can be closed quickly. The skills that actually matter long-term are the ones you can’t teach in a bootcamp.

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Your Technical Gaps Are More Forgivable Than You Think

Here’s what candidates often miss: hiring managers know that algorithms can be learned in 3-6 months. They’ve seen it happen dozens of times. That shaky performance on the coding question? It’s concerning, but it’s fixable.

What they’re really evaluating during your interview is something much harder to develop: Can you lead? Can you communicate clearly when things get difficult? Can you navigate complex team situations with maturity?

These skills take years to build. And when a candidate demonstrates them convincingly, it changes the entire equation.

When you struggle technically but excel behaviorally, you’re sending a powerful message: “I might need to brush up on algorithms, but I’m the kind of person who gets work done and makes teams better.”

What This Means for Your Interview Preparation

If you’re preparing for Big Tech interviews, this insight should fundamentally guide your strategy.

Don’t abandon technical prep - you still need to meet a baseline competency. But there is a marginal gain beyond a certain point. Master the fundamentals. It’s absolutely non-negotiable. But don’t get into rabbit hole while preparing for technical interviews.

Invest heavily in behavioral preparation - Treat it with the same rigor you’d give to system design or coding rounds. Your behavioral stories might be what tips the scale in your favor and get you hired at right level.

Develop real experiences worth talking about - Have you resolved team conflicts? Led initiatives? Communicated complex technical decisions to non-technical stakeholders? These experiences are gold in interviews.

Practice articulating your stories with structure. Use frameworks like STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) to ensure your answers are clear, complete, and compelling.

The Stories That Matter Most

When interviewers remember your interview in the debrief meeting—when someone says “Wait, can we talk about this candidate more?”—it’s rarely because of your elegant algorithm solution. It’s because of stories like these:

How you handled a disagreement between team members, showing you can navigate interpersonal dynamics with empathy and decisiveness.

How you communicated a complex technical problem to stakeholders under pressure, demonstrating clarity when it matters most.

How you led an initiative through ambiguity, proving you can create structure where none exists.

How you made a difficult decision that balanced competing priorities, showing maturity and judgment.

These stories reveal skills that take years to develop and can’t be crammed the week before your interview. But if you have them, they can be your secret weapon.

The Skills That Actually Matter Long-Term

Here’s the reality: most technical gaps can be closed quickly with focused effort and good mentorship. Companies know this. What they can’t easily develop is:

Leadership ability that inspires teams and drives projects forward through obstacles.

Communication clarity that prevents misunderstandings, aligns stakeholders, and makes complex ideas accessible.

Emotional intelligence that builds trust, resolves conflicts, and creates psychological safety.

Team dynamics navigation that understands when to push, when to compromise, when to escalate, and when to mentor.

These are the skills that made the candidate in mentioned in the LinkedIn post become “one of the strongest team members” who “made everyone around him better.”

What I disagree with in the LinkedIn post

The LinkedIn post is to the point and resonates with me deeply but there is one point that I disagree with is the last sentence of the post

The skills that actually matter long-term are the ones you can’t teach in a bootcamp.

These skills can be learnt and taught. Yes, it requires experience and practice but these skills can very much be acquired by anyone and everyone. I know this because I’m one of the person who lacked these skills and I learnt it myself.

Infact, these are the very skills I taught last year in ‘Big Tech Interview Preparation Workshop.’ While I do not have bandwidth to another workshop soon, I converted the recording of the workshop into self paced Big Tech Interview Preparation course.

This 3+ hour course will teach you how to:
✅ Deliver high-impact STAR-format responses
✅ Craft compelling technical achievement stories
✅ Effectively communicate leadership experiences
✅ Blend technical depth with strong behavioral skills
✅ Prepare mentally for four to eight rounds of interviews
✅ Stay authentic while following structured frameworks
✅ Navigate past failures and conflicts with confidence
✅ Deliver senior-level responses to get hired at the right level

Your Path Forward

If you’re worried about technical gaps as you prepare for Big Tech interviews, here’s your action plan:

Achieve technical baseline competency. You need to demonstrate sufficient technical ability for the role—this is non-negotiable.

But don’t let technical perfectionism consume all your prep time. Those extra hours grinding hard technical problems might be better spent developing compelling behavioral stories.

Audit your professional experiences. What situations have you navigated that demonstrate leadership, communication, conflict resolution, or team collaboration? Write them down. I provide templates and step-by-step guide on how do it in the course.

Craft and practice your stories. Make them structured, specific, and genuine. Practice until you can deliver them clearly even when you’re nervous.

Remember the multiplier effect. Companies aren’t just hiring someone to solve technical problems in isolation. They’re hiring someone who will work with a team, influence decisions, and potentially grow into leadership. Show them you’re that person. Showcase your behavioral and leadership skills while solving technical challenges.

The Bottom Line

Your next Big Tech interview might not go perfectly on the technical side. You might need hints. You might struggle with the optimal solution. And that’s okay.

Because when the debrief meeting happens, someone might pull up their notes from your behavioral interview and say, “Wait, can we talk about this candidate more?”

And those notes showing your leadership, your communication skills, your emotional intelligence, your maturity, might be exactly what gets you hired.

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