What if your job in a behavioral interview isn’t to answer the question at all?
In this episode of Supra Insider, Marc Baselga and Ben Erez sit down with Austen McDonald, former engineering manager and hiring committee chair at Meta and author of Mastering Behavioral Interviews. Austen explains why character is what predicts long-term performance. He covers why ownership and adaptability have become the signals companies care about most in the age of AI. And he argues that your real job as a candidate is to guide the interviewer toward the parts of your career that best predict how you’ll do the role.
They explore every flavor of behavioral interview, from hiring manager screens and project deep dives to Anthropic’s culture round. Austen explains how to handle an inexperienced interviewer using his “decode, select, deliver” loop. He then walks through building a bank of core stories, structuring long stories so the takeaways are obvious, and matching the clock speed of your stories to the company you’re targeting. Marc and Ben share what they’re seeing on the PM side, from take-homes as the real test of AI fluency to Meta’s product sense with prototyping round. The three also debate whether conflict resolution matters more or less as teams flatten.
If you’re a senior engineer or product leader with interviews coming up, haven’t interviewed in a few years and want to know what’s changed, or keep telling strong stories that don’t seem to land- this episode is for you.
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In this episode, we covered the following topics:
* (02:09) Why Austen chose behavioral interviews after Meta, and why ownership and adaptability now matter most
* (08:38) Mapping every type of behavioral interview, from recruiter screens to team match and project deep dives
* (13:23) How Anthropic’s culture round changes the rules, and why Austen never let junior interviewers run behavioral rounds
* (19:23) “Your job is not to answer the questions”: the decode, select, deliver loop and how to handle an inexperienced interviewer
* (25:01) Ben’s story of a candidate who flipped the question, and why past behavior is more predictive than hypotheticals
* (29:23) How to prepare: know yourself, build a bank of core stories, and structure them so the takeaways are obvious
* (36:38) Matching the clock speed of your stories to the company, from big tech to the frontier labs
* (40:00) When to start preparing, why most people start too late, and keeping a “yay me” file off company servers
* (44:55) What’s changing: project deep dives at more levels, automated screens, and questions about how you use AI
* (48:59) Marc and Ben’s PM take: take-homes as the real AI fluency test and Meta’s product sense with prototyping round
* (56:57) Do conflict resolution skills matter more or less as teams flatten and building gets cheaper?
* (01:04:56) Where to find Austen: his book, his Substack, and coaching for senior candidates
* (01:05:19) Gratitude Corner: Austen thanks his wife Kokeb, a six-time author and coach for occupational therapists, for showing him the path to entrepreneurship. He also thanks Henry Cheung, a design leader he worked with at Meta, for encouraging him to write the book.
* And more!
Links:
* Mastering Behavioral Interviews (book): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G6CM9T87
* Mastering Behavioral Interviews (Substack): https://thebehavioral.substack.com
* Supra Insider #119: How I landed a director role in six weeks (Eric Posen): https://suprainsider.substack.com/p/119-how-i-landed-a-director-role
* Kokeb McDonald: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kokeb-mcdonald-328a1311/
* Henry Cheung: https://www.linkedin.com/in/henryhycheung/
* Austen McDonald (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/@thebehavioral
* Austen McDonald: https://www.linkedin.com/in/austenmc/
* Marc: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbaselga/
* Ben: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benerez/
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