Company-specific preparation

Companies describe what they look for in behavioral interviews on their own careers pages. Read those pages for each company in your loop, then map your stories to the stated values. This chapter summarizes public material; it is not an internal rubric.

Amazon: Leadership Principles

Amazon's behavioral questions are organized around its 16 Leadership Principles, and interviewers commonly probe several in one loop: Customer Obsession; Ownership; Invent and Simplify; Are Right, A Lot; Learn and Be Curious; Hire and Develop the Best; Insist on the Highest Standards; Think Big; Bias for Action; Frugality; Earn Trust; Dive Deep; Have Backbone, Disagree and Commit; Deliver Results; Strive to be Earth's Best Employer; Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility.

Prepare at least two stories per principle you expect for your level, and expect deep follow-ups asking for data and your exact role. Amazon's guidance asks for STAR-structured answers: see its interview preparation pages.

Google: general qualities

Google's hiring pages describe assessing general cognitive ability, leadership, role-related knowledge, and "Googleyness", which covers working well with others, comfort with ambiguity and doing the right thing. Expect hypothetical questions ("What would you do if...") as well as questions about past behavior; answer hypotheticals with a structured approach and an example from your experience. See How we hire.

Meta and others

Many companies run a dedicated behavioral round covering conflict, collaboration, feedback, growth and impact. Read each company's interview preparation page, ask your recruiter which round types you have, and prepare stories for each theme.

Mapping stories to values

Your story	Values it can support	The follow-up to expect
Migrating a service with no downtime	Ownership, Deliver Results, Dive Deep	What could have gone wrong, and how did you know it didn't?
Pushing back on a launch date	Have Backbone, Customer Obsession, Earn Trust	What did you lose by delaying?
Mentoring a new hire	Hire and Develop the Best	How did you measure their progress?

Use each story for its strongest two or three values rather than stretching one story across everything.