texastoastΒ inΒ
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Software EngineerΒ Β
Anyone do hubspot SWE interview recently?
I'm mostly curious about how to handle their behavioural q's as they seem to index a lot on these. What q's did you prepare for in these, how do you know if your example is good enough to use as an answer or not?
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bringeeRecruiterΒ Β
Not sure about Hubspot questions specifically, but I used to recruit for Amazon and obviously they weighed the behavioral questions super heavily, so I'll be happy to share some insight.
STAR method - If you're unfamiliar, I'd look up online resources, but the gist is "Situation, Task, Action, Result."
So make sure you answer the behavioral questions with this structure in mind. Explain the context, what your task was, what you did, and how it impacted the org/company/team, etc.
Back up your answers with data points. Quantitative makes most sense for engineers, but there are qualitative data points as well that you shouldn't forget about. As you explain your 'task' or 'action,' make sure it's backed up with data. Did you fix some code that helped out a team somewhere? Great! Make sure you explain how the broken code affected that team and what impact it had and then also explain how you fixed it and what the ending result was. Were they able to put out products faster, help customers faster, etc.?
Companies that index heavily on the behavioral questions tend to prefer going deep into the answers, rather than taking a lot of surface level answers. So again, make sure you have some depth to your answers as well.
The toughest questions people usually deal with are the ones where they have to explain weaknesses or disagreements. I'd almost guarantee you get a question that's like "Tell me about a time you disagreed with your manager. What was it about? What happened?"
This one you'll want to make sure you answer carefully and objectively. Again, using data to make your point will go a long way. You can disagree with your mgr because they're an a-hole, just don't say that part out loud lol.
Say something like "Well my manager suggested we do X, but I took a look at our data, presented it to them and suggested we do Y. There was still some disagreements because of prioritization, etc. but I worked with them to come up with a solution that resulted in ABC success results".
Similarly for weaknesses. Don't go with the corny "I work too hard" answer. Come up with a legitimate weakness, explain how you found out it was a weakness (did your mgr bring it up? did you mess something up?), then explain what you have been doing to help fix it.
Hope this helps for now!
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