Behavioural vs Technical Interviews
Technical interviews assess whether you can do the job's technical work, through coding, system design, debugging, or discussion of your projects. Behavioural interviews assess how you work: collaboration, communication, handling conflict, ownership, and learning from mistakes, usually through questions about past experiences. Most engineering hiring processes use both, and each needs specific preparation.
What each assesses
Technical interviews check problem solving, coding ability, design skills, and depth of knowledge in relevant areas. Behavioural interviews check how you collaborate, communicate, handle disagreement and pressure, take ownership, and grow from mistakes. Employers use both because technical ability alone does not predict success on a team.
Preparing for technical interviews
Practise problems relevant to the role, explain your reasoning aloud, and review your own projects deeply enough to discuss decisions and trade-offs. For mid-level and senior roles, practise system design. Mock interviews with peers help you get used to thinking under observation.
Preparing for behavioural interviews
Prepare six to eight stories from your experience covering common themes: a difficult technical problem, a disagreement with a colleague, a mistake and what you learned, a time you led or influenced without authority, a project under pressure, and helping others grow. Structure each with the situation, your specific actions, and the result, often called the STAR method. Use real details; interviewers probe follow-ups.
How the balance shifts with seniority
Junior roles focus more on technical fundamentals and learning ability. As seniority rises, behavioural and leadership questions carry more weight: influencing decisions, mentoring, handling ambiguity, and making trade-offs across teams. Senior candidates who prepare only for coding often underperform in these rounds.
Common behavioural questions for engineers
Expect prompts such as: describe a time you disagreed with a technical decision; describe a production incident you handled; give an example of a project that failed or slipped and what you changed afterwards; describe a time you received critical feedback on your code; describe a time you had to learn a new technology quickly. Interviewers look for your specific actions, the reasoning behind them, and what you learned. Answers that blame others or stay at the level of what the team did tend to score poorly.
Where the two overlap
The boundary is not strict. Technical interviewers watch how you communicate, handle hints, and respond when your first approach fails, which are behavioural signals. Behavioural interviewers often ask about technical decisions, such as a trade-off you made under time pressure, and expect enough technical detail to judge your judgement. Project deep dives sit in the middle: they test technical depth and ownership at the same time, so prepare one or two projects you can discuss from both angles.
On the day
In technical rounds, clarify the problem before starting and think aloud. In behavioural rounds, keep each story to about two minutes, then let the interviewer steer follow-ups. In both, it is fine to pause and think before answering.
| Aspect | Behavioural interview | Technical interview |
|---|---|---|
| Assesses | Collaboration, communication, judgement, ownership | Coding, design, debugging, technical depth |
| Typical format | Questions about past experiences | Problems, design exercises, project deep dives |
| Preparation | Structured stories from real experience | Practice problems and design scenarios |
| Common mistake | Vague or hypothetical answers | Silent problem solving without explaining |
| Weight with seniority | Increases | Remains important, shifts toward design |
Frequently asked questions
- What is the STAR method?
- STAR stands for situation, task, action, and result. It is a way to structure answers to behavioural questions: describe the context, what you needed to achieve, the specific actions you took, and the outcome, ideally with a measurable result and what you learned. It keeps answers concrete and concise.
- Which is more important, behavioural or technical interviews?
- Both matter, and their weight depends on the role and seniority. Technical rounds often act as a threshold, while behavioural rounds can decide between technically strong candidates, especially for senior positions. Underperforming badly in either round can end a candidacy, so prepare for both.
- How many stories should I prepare for behavioural interviews?
- Six to eight well-prepared stories usually cover most questions, since each can be adapted to several themes such as conflict, leadership, failure, or impact. Choose recent, specific examples with your own actions clearly identified, and practise telling each in about two minutes with room for follow-up questions.
- Do engineers really get asked behavioural questions?
- Yes, at most companies. Engineering work involves collaboration, code review, incidents, and trade-offs with other teams, so employers assess how candidates handle them. Many hiring processes include a dedicated behavioural round, and technical interviewers also observe communication and how candidates respond to feedback.