How software engineering behavioral interviews are evaluated at Meta (from an ex-Meta manager)

Hey, Aline (founder of interviewing.io) here. This is the 6th post in our Guest Author series.

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Lior Neu-ner

Lior Neu-ner is a former Software Engineer and Engineering Manager at Meta, where he worked on Workplace from Meta and Whatsapp. He is currently the founder of Remote Rocketship, a job board for remote tech job openings. You can reach him on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Hi, I’m Lior. I spent close to five years at Meta as a software engineer and engineering manager. During my time there I conducted more than 150 behavioral interviews. In this post, I’ll be sharing what Meta looks for in a behavioral interview and how we evaluated candidates.

Purpose of the interview

The interview has two purposes:

1. Assess whether a candidate has a history of demonstrating the right behaviors that would make them successful at Meta
2. Assess the seniority of the candidate i.e. junior (IC4), senior (IC5), or staff (IC6)

To do this, we assess eight main focus areas in the interview. In no particular order, they are:

• Motivation: What drives them? Ideal candidates are self-motivated, passionate about technologies and products that have a real impact.
• Ability to be Proactive: Are they able to take initiative? Given a difficult problem, are they able to figure out how to get it done and execute?
• Able to work in an unstructured environment: How well are they able to take ownership in ambiguous situations? Or do they rely on others to be told what to do?
• Perseverance: Are they able to push through difficult problems or blockers?
• Conflict Resolution: How well are they able to handle and work through challenging relationships?
• Empathy: How well are they able to see things from the perspective of others and understand their motivations?
• Growth: How well do they understand their strengths, weaknesses and growth areas? Are they making a continued effort to grow?
• Communication: Are they able to clearly communicate their stories during the interview?

To assess these focus areas, we ask questions on the candidates work history and dig into the details of how they handled various situations.

To assess the candidate’s seniority, for each focus area we determine if the scope of the situation is something we’d expect for a junior, senior, or staff engineer. We’ll go into this in more detail below.

Interview Format

Each interview is 45 minutes long, broken down into the following segments:

• Introduction - 5 minutes
• Interview Questions on the candidates past work experience - 35 minutes
• Candidate’s turns to ask questions - 5 minutes

Example Questions and Answers

Below are questions and answers illustrating how we collect signals on the candidate for each focus area. In a typical interview, we’ll ask the candidate five or six questions and dive deep into the details of each situation. Each question may provide signals on more than focus area.

Motivation

Example Questions:

• “What project are you most proud of and why?”
• “Tell me about a recent day working that was really great and/or fun.”

Example Responses:

• Junior: A story about a project they are proud of that had an impact on their team.
• Senior: A story about a project they are proud of that had a large impact on their team.
• Staff: A story about a project they are proud of that had a large impact on their org.

Ability to be Proactive

Example Questions:

• “Tell me about a time when you wanted to change something that was outside of your regular scope of work.”
• “Tell me about a time you had to make a fast decision and live with the results.”

Example Responses:

• Junior: A story about a change they proactively suggested and drove that had an impact on their team’s focus area. Usually only requiring the candidate themselves to work on.
• Senior: A story about a change they proactively suggested and drove that had an impact on their entire team. Usually requiring three or more people to work on.
• Staff: A story about a change they proactively suggested and drove that had an impact on their entire org. Usually requiring two or more teams to work on.

Able to work in an unstructured environment

Example Questions:

• “How do you decide what to work on next?”
• “Tell me about a project or task that was ambiguous or underspecified.”

Example Responses:

• Junior: A story about an ambiguous task that the candidate took ownership of and was able to drive consensus from a few stakeholders in their team. Usually only requiring the candidate themselves to work on.
• Senior: A story about an ambiguous project that the candidate took ownership of and was able to drive consensus from stakeholders in their team or org. Usually requiring three or more people to work on.
• Staff: A story about an ambiguous project that the candidate took ownership of and was able to drive consensus from stakeholders in their org. Usually requiring two or more teams to work on.

Perseverance

Example Questions:

• “Tell me about a time when you needed to overcome external obstacles to complete” a task or project.
• “Tell me about a time a project took longer as expected.”

Example Responses:

• Junior: A story about a task with many technical difficulties and how they overcame each blocker.
• Senior: A story about a project with many technical difficulties that were blocking their team and how they overcame each blocker.
• Staff: A story about a project with many technical difficulties that were blocking many teams and how they overcame each blocker.

Conflict Resolution and Empathy

Example Questions:

• “Tell me about a person or team who you found most challenging to work with.”
• “Tell me about a time you disagreed with a coworker.”
• “Tell me about a situation where two teams couldn’t agree on a path forward.”

Example Responses:

• Junior: A story about how they were able to work through a disagreement with a coworker on an implementation detail of a larger project.
• Senior: A story about how they were able to work through a disagreement with a few coworkers or team leads on the direction of a larger project.
• Staff: A story about how they were able to work through a disagreement with two or more teams on the direction of a large project.

Growth

Example Questions:

• “Describe a situation when you made a mistake, and what you learned from it.”
• “Tell me about some constructive feedback you received from a manager or a peer”
• “Tell me about a skill set that you observed in a peer or mentor that you want to develop in the next six months.”

Example Responses:

• Junior: A story about a new technology they want to learn and the progress they have made to learn it.
• Senior: A story about a soft skill or technical skill they want to developer and the progress they have made to learn it. Usually a skill that will have the potential to affect the entire team.
• Staff: A story about a soft skill or technical skill they want to developer and the progress they have made to learn it. Usually a skill that will have the potential to affect two or more teams.

Communication

Generally covered during the interview as to how clearly they are explaining the stories. There is also some overlap with Empathy and how they communicate with others.

Putting it all together

After the interview, the interviewer will compile their feedback and give a hire/no-hire recommendation as well as the candidate’s seniority. The hire/no-hire decision is given as a spectrum, ranging from low confidence to high confidence. This is illustrated below:

The recommendation is compiled from the signals the interviewer collected on the eight focus areas. Typically, this looks like the following:

• For junior engineers, a hire recommendation is given if they displayed positive signals on nearly all of the eight focus areas.
• For senior engineers, a hire recommendation is given if they displayed positive signals on nearly all of the eight focus areas AND at the level we would expect for senior engineers. Otherwise, a no-hire recommendation is given.
• For staff engineers, a hire recommendation is given if they showed positive signals on nearly all of the eight focus areas AND at the level we would expect for staff engineers. Otherwise, a no-hire recommendation is given at a staff level, although they may receive a hire recommendation at a senior level.

It’s worth mentioning that the interviewer’s decision is not final. Once all interview feedback has been collected from all interviews, the interviewers will discuss any concerns or strengths of the candidate with a “debrief committee”.