IBM Behavioral Interview Questions and Answers - How to Get Hired at IBM

behavioral interview questions are some of the more common questions you will get in any interview process they're also more difficult to answer and in IBM it's no different you were definitely going to get behavioral interview

questions in today's video I'm going to teach you how to answer some of the specific behavioral interview questions you were going to be asked in your IBM interview going to teach you how to answer them from a recruiter's

perspective now this is video two in a five-part series the whole series is oriented around how to help you get a job with IBM so if this is the first video you were seeing make sure you go to the playlist and watch all the videos

and when you watch this one through all the way to the end at the very end I will actually te up the next one on the screen so you can seamlessly move from this video to the next one all right so with that being said let's get started

now first and foremost what is a behavioral interview uh question a behavioral interview question is a question that basically prompts you to draw on a past experience and walk the interviewer through how you handled that

experience this gives them a glimpse into how you would be as an employee how you would handle different situations what your actions have been and what you would do if they hired you here at IBM

so that's what a behavioral interview question is and you can kind of tell when you were getting a behavioral interview question because it will start with can you give me an example of or tell me about a time when or you can you

share with me a time when blank right they're basically asking you tell me about a time something happened previously and what did you do about it now when you get one of these questions the keys to answering it is to use the

star method the star method is situation task action result and it's a framework uh of allowing you to share the story with them situations so where were you

working what was your role task what was a specific thing that you had to do accomplish resolve Etc action what was your specific action what did you specifically do to address that

situation and then finally result that's the outcome what was the end result of everything you've talked about up into this point and when it makes sense throw an L on the end for lesson what did you learn here and what will you take with

you moving forward all right now let's talk about some of the specific questions you're going to get asked in your IBM interview now the first question is tell me about a time you face a difficult situation and how you able to overcome this now a few things

when you're asked this question you want to keep in mind um one use a star method situation task action result um two it actually needs to be a difficult situation if you give them an example

and the example doesn't have a true difficult situation here it doesn't really satisfy the question to begin with so make sure when you think about okay what story makes sense here think about a story in which there was a

challenge um three you have to make sure you're positive about this right part of the reason you ask this question as an interviewer is you want to see how this person feels about dealing with challenging situations so if you tell your story and you're like yeah one of

my other co-workers dropped the balls it was a it was a big deal so I had to drop everything I was doing and I had to go help them it's not a good example it makes you look like a bad teammate and it makes you look like you're stressed

or inconvenienced by other people when you have a difficult situ sitation it's important that they feel you embraced it enthusiastically in order to solve the issue for your team or organization so

make sure you're positive about this right um and then lastly I always think it's good to use this as a lesson what did you learn you know what did you learn from a difficult situation anytime you encounter a difficult situation

ideally you were learning something you can take with you moving forward to make you a more effective employee so if you can do those things and walk them through using the star method you should be able to answer this question great

now can't answer this question for you because you need to draw on something you specifically did in your past but it should be pretty easy for you to find an example like this now this next question is a really interesting one and I like this question a lot I haven't heard it

um use a ton but it's describe a situation in which you worked hard but you didn't succeed now what they're basically doing here is they want to know about a time you failed but they want to know about a time you failed where you worked really hard to achieve

your goal now whenever I'm asked about a time I failed in an interview I like to use the first 50% Rule now the first 50% rule BAS basically states that you want to give an example that happened during the first 50% of your career and the

reason you want to do this is it puts distance between that failing and where you are now if you have a 10-year career and it happened in year four it's realistic to believe that although you

failed then you have grown a ton in the last six years of your career so I like to do that there's nothing wrong with failing and there's nothing wrong with being authentic here in fact you do want to be authentic it's essential that you

give them a story in which you did work really hard but you did fail at something so it's okay to do that I still feel a little bit better putting some distance between myself and that situation um the next thing that's

really important when you answer this question is you can't fail because of your mass incompetence or negligence right if you failed because yeah I had this project it was a really big project I worked really hard on it but then I

slept in and missed a presentation and is a terrible example because it makes you look like a person who does not do the job well now the big thing here in addition to being authentic and being vulnerable when you answer this question

is you need to be able to walk away with a lesson how are you a better employee now than you were prior to this what did you learn what lessons have you taken with you from that time you worked hard and failed to current day it's a great

opportunity to share a story like this I mean your story can sound like something like this you know I I worked in this project I was a lead for it it was my first time ever leading a project and I worked really hard to coordinate the

people to get things done but at the end of the day we fell a little short um which was a massive lesson for me you know being this the first time that I've ever led a project there was a lot of things that I think I missed that now

having LED several successful projects since then I understand so for me this was a really challenging situation but I learned so much from it so I'm actually quite grateful that I experienced this now what I said there didn't have a ton

of details because I just made like a generic example of but the gist of that is things you can include in your answer it was something that was new to you you worked really hard to try to achieve it

you fell short because of things you didn't know but you are grateful for the experience because you've learned so much and the the situations that are similar to this one that you've experienced since then you have succeeded in part due to what you

learned there if you answer it like this you're going to crush it this next question is tell me about a time you solved a problem creatively this is a great question and if you get asked a question like this in an interview it's kind of a gold mine the reason why I say

that is this is um an example of a time where you can have a hero answer and what that means is it can be uh an opportunity to share an example from your career in which you did something

significant that had a meaning impact um for your team or company right you don't always get these opportunities where they basically tee up tell me by a time you were awesome or you did

something that was super important so this is an opportunity to do that the next thing you want to do whenever you have an example like this is you want to quantify your impact if you were able to be creative and you solve something for

your company it's much more powerful if you can assign a dollar value to it because of the change you made your company made 20% more Revenue over the following 12

months which resulted in a net gain of 500k of additional profit or something like that right you know some something like that if you can quantify it and allow them to imagine the impact it made

you know based on your creative solution it makes it much much more powerful the next thing you want to make sure you're doing when you share this story is you want them to feel that you like creative

problem solving you like thinking outside of the box to do this so that should be something that you know you say things like I really enjoy opportunities like this and I like the opportunity to get creative when it comes to finding a solution or it's a

strength of mine to think about Solutions other people hadn't thought of previously and think outside the box saying things like that let them know that you have an appetite for this type of work and if they're asking you about a time you've did this there is

definitely that type of situation that you are going to encounter as an IBM Employee so showing enthusiasm to this type of thing is really really important now for all these questions you want to make sure you're using the star method

situation task action result but those other pointers should help you really answer them in a way that shows them that you have the potential to be a great employee now one of the most important questions they're going to ask you in your IBM interview is why do you

want to work at IBM it's one of the most important interview questions period it's why I made a whole video about it in this video I teach you how to answer this question and I give you a couple different answer examples that way you

can identify the one that fits best for you and you can absolutely nail this interview question and this interview question is often the tiebreaker on who gets hired who who doesn't so I'm done here but I will see you over there