What Does Improv Comedy Have to Do with Job Interviews?
Three strategies for preparing for behavioral interviews
Confession: I wouldn’t be writing this article if I didn’t struggle a lot with behavioral interviews. And I mean a lot- every third word that came out of my mouth would be an “um”, “like” or what probably felt like the worst, “so…yeah”. I figured it might be a good idea to start keeping track of some of the things I’ve learned so (a) I’d have a convenient way of remembering and storing these pieces of information and (b) to reach a larger audience of people (that’s you!), in hopes that you will find this useful as well.
First of all, if you’ve made it to this stage: Congratulations! Remember that making it this far is quite an accomplishment, especially when you consider there’s usually hundreds if not thousands of people applying for any given role. Getting the interview signals that recruiters believe you would be a good fit for the role you applied for, so now it’s your time to shine and prove it to them!
There are plenty of articles that already exist to tell you what behavioral interviews are, the common questions, and why they’re important, so instead I’ll focus on some strategies I found useful towards nailing behavioral questions.
1. Bring your story to life
Let’s be real: telling people about yourself is not easy. Heck, if I knew how to do that I might start writing my autobiography!
There are ways, though, to make this easier. Let’s start off with the things you know about yourself: Look at your hobbies and extracurriculars. What do you enjoy doing? What about each thing makes it enjoyable? Look at your previous work experiences. Which experiences meant the most to you? What accomplishments are you most proud of?
Once you boil down each experience to its core, hopefully some type of pattern will emerge that helps you better understand your strengths, your values, and ultimately your passions.
For example, when people ask me any questions about how I got started in product management, I immediately point to my experience volunteering at the Hopkins Hospital. As a volunteer, I maintained relationships with ten patients each week to connect them with services like food stamps, clothing, and employment. What I really enjoyed about this role was the opportunity to listen to my client’s issues and scour for the best solution for their specific situation. This isn’t so different from my role as a product manager, where I listen to customers’ experiences and craft the best solution our team can feasibly implement.
Product management and volunteering might seem like two vastly distinct roles: the former depends on building new features and products, whereas the latter focuses on building relationships with hospital patients. Another key insight here is that you don’t necessarily have to focus on just work experiences for behavioral questions — personal life stories and extracurriculars count too! The point is, once you find the common thread between your past experiences and the role you’re applying for, you can weave together the full story that tells people about you.
But wait! How are you supposed to summarize your entire life into a response that’s around two minutes long? I’ll save the answer to that question for the next section…
2. Make your responses short, but memorable
Now that we’ve conquered the first challenge of building your story, the next step is to whittle that down into something concise and coherent. Before we tackle this question, let me start off with a brief anecdote.
During my last two years of college, I served as a resident advisor for freshmen. Basically, my job was to help freshmen become acclimated to living away from home. In case you’re wondering, yes, freshmen will sometimes call you at 3 am to exterminate mice, and yes, they will sometimes disappoint you by throwing dorm parties when the policy explicitly says not to. What I really enjoyed about this job, though, was being able to attend my residents’ events around campus. Attending these events opened my perspective to all the cool things going on at Hopkins and taught me a number of life lessons as well.
For example, one of my residents was part of Buttered Niblets, our college improv group. During one of their shows, I was immediately fascinated by the improv exercise “1 minute to 5 seconds”. In it, the audience suggests a plotline which the actors then have to act out in 1 minute. The actors are then tasked with the challenge of repeating the same scene in 30 seconds, then 15 seconds, then 5 seconds.
I found “1 minute to 5 seconds” to be extremely helpful towards timeboxing responses in a behavioral interview. In this case, your audience is the interviewer and you are the actor — though luckily, you’ll have more than five seconds to get your point across in the actual interview! Pick one of your experiences and try talking about it for 5 minutes, then 2 minutes, then 1 minute. What similarities do you notice between each take? What are you cutting out?
This exercise can really make you think critically about the examples you’re trying to get across, essentially forcing yourself to be concise while still conveying the most important elements of your story. By the end of this exercise you will hopefully have a good idea of how to describe the situation, your contribution to it, and the outcome of your role.
3. Tailor your responses to your role
While the first two tips can apply to behavioral questions from all types of fields, the last tip I’ll leave you with is a little more specific to the role you’re applying for.
At the end of the day, behavioral questions are used to assess whether you’d be a good fit for both the team and the position. Usually that means having some amount of experience in a similar position — whether or not that’s the case for you, though, a strategy I find extremely helpful is to imagine myself answering the interviewer’s questions as an existing member on their team.
It probably sounds like I’m telling you to get the job in order to…get the job. Which doesn’t make too much sense, so let’s take a step back: What are some ways that can help you envision yourself as a member of the team? One first step may be to revisit the job listing and gather information on key characteristics of the role. You might also find it helpful to connect with someone in the role or company you applied for to better understand what traits make them successful in their career. Whatever role you’re looking at, understand what traits are needed to succeed and bring those into your responses.
For example, I’ve observed the majority of my role as a product manager to be centered around the ability to communicate — whether that’s asking the right questions to understand the customer experience, or conveying information from one team to another to align on goals. So the sweet spot for answering a behavioral question in a PM interview is a response that can get the point across clearly and concisely, while demonstrating soft skills like empathy and open-mindedness. While this is by no means a strict framework, knowing the responsibilities and traits of the role can help you develop the structure of your responses.
So that’s it! I envision this article to be the beginning of a series on several employment topics that span from the initial job application phase to salary negotiation. If you have a particular request for me or have questions about anything I covered today, feel free to shout it in the comments — I’m listening. Rooting for you in all your future interviews and beyond!
A huge thanks to Anatoliy, Athena, Ariel, Vincent and Lauren for their feedback, thoughts and suggestions while I wrote this article! Hopefully this article is nothing like what you remember seeing in the beginning…you all are champs and I couldn’t have made it here without you! I’d also be remiss not thank Danny, super super grateful for all your help so far as I navigate the complex maze that is product management. That alone could be the topic of a whole new article. I appreciate you!!
