👄 How to nail your behavioral interview

Turn “Tell me about a time...” into “When can you start?”

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Hi and welcome back, brave human!

How have you been so far!!!!!!!

Today, we will make sure you ALWAYS pass your behavioral interviews.

I used to dismiss behavioral interviews and GRINDED LeetCode.

Until I failed a couple of behavioral interviews. After this happened, I promised myself this would never be the case again.

Today, we are going to make sure you never fail a behavioral interview ever again.

1. You are going to make a script (Even If It Feels Awkward)

This might feel a little forced but having a script is THE way to go.

This is going to be the structure of your script.

Here’s the structure I recommend:

Start with your current role and work backwards in time.

It should look something like this:

 I currently work as a Software Engineer at [Company Name], where I’ve been responsible for:

  • Reducing deployment times by 40% through CI/CD pipeline optimizations

  • Leading the migration from legacy systems to microservices

  • Mentoring junior engineers and scaling our onboarding process

Before that, I was at [Previous Company], where I:

  • Built internal tools that saved the support team ~10 hours/week

  • Shipped new features that increased user retention by 15%

  • Collaborated with cross-functional teams on product experiments

And earlier in my journey, I was at [First Tech Role or Internship], where I:

  • Learned how to break things and fix them fast 😅

  • Got my hands dirty with full-stack development

  • Developed a deep respect for clean code and version control

If you’ve been laid off, here’s my honest take: Keep “working” at your last job, at least for a little while.

2. Speak in 3s

I paid a lot of money to learn this, and now I’m giving it to you for free. 🤑

Here’s the exercise:

Step 1: Say your thesis out loud.
Example: “Denisse’s newsletter is the best.”

Step 2: Back it up with 3 strong, memorable reasons:

  1. She always keeps the content spicy and educational 🔥 

  2. It feels like you’ve got a smart, funny friend holding your hand 💅

  3. She gives advice that’s actually useful, not the copy-paste fluff you see everywhere

That’s the power of 3s: it’s clean, it’s sticky, and it sells.

Try it next time you're telling your story, pitching yourself, or just writing your About Me.

3. Always end the call by asking for next steps.

Like, always.

And don’t just ask, assume you crushed it.

Say something like:
"This was a great conversation, what are the next steps from here?"
or
"Excited to keep things moving, who would I be chatting with next?"

Confidence is contagious. And the truth is, people expect follow-up energy from the ones who get hired.

So be a little cocky. Just enough to make them believe you already belong there.

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Cheers to you hacking your week!

Denisse

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