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Behavioral Rounds Improvement

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Entry-Level Software Engineer at Taro Community6 months ago

For my Behavioral rounds Preparation.

  1. I curated all the questions surrounding leadership principles
  2. I also created STAR answers for each question

I try to demonstrate that I have led Projected and Solved challenging problems on my own. But even with that interviewers seem to downlevel me from L5 > L4 (Amzon Levels). what qualities I should exhibit to get L5 level and how should I prepare for it?

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Discussion

(4 comments)
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    Tech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
    6 months ago

    I'm going to talk about this in-depth in my upcoming behavioral interview course, but in the meantime, check this out: https://www.jointaro.com/course/ace-your-tech-interview-and-get-a-job-as-a-software-engineer/dont-get-downleveled/

    It's hard to say why you're getting leveled at SDE 1/L4 (junior) instead of SDE 2/L5 (mid-level) without seeing the exact stories you're pitching, but what I will say is that given the market, companies are holding the bar much higher now as they have way more leverage. Amazon L5 is naturally a wide band to begin with, so it's possible that their bar for L5 hires is what L5.5 was in the "good" economy.

    Also, given that you're an entry-level engineer (just based on your title within Taro), it will be hard to convince folks to uplevel you, especially FAANG. I'm assuming you have 3 YOE or less? The bar for FAANG mid-level is more like 4+ YOE now.

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      Entry-Level Software Engineer [OP]
      Taro Community
      6 months ago

      I have 5+ yrs of experience but only one year of that is in the US. but I have intern experience in FAANG too

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      Profile picture
      Tech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
      6 months ago

      Okay, this makes sense. A lot of folks work outside of the US before coming here (often in India), and I have been on the hiring loops for many of those engineers. The outside-of-US experience is often discounted by 2x minimum (can be as high as 5x). So if you have 5 YOE outside the US, it will be counted at 2.5 YOE at the highest and just 1 YOE at the lowest. It's harsh, but that's just the way things are.

      The caveat is that the discount will vary based on company as well: If you worked in like Google India for instance, there shouldn't be that large a discount.

      If you want to counteract these penalties, I recommend side projects (how I did it) and open-source: https://www.jointaro.com/course/level-up-your-code-quality-as-a-software-engineer/grow-even-faster-side-projects-and-open-source/

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    Eng @ Taro
    6 months ago

    Lee had a really good response for preparing for the Amazon behavioral interviews here:

    https://www.jointaro.com/question/oG3Wf6gTA3Q7JtvYYDYe/how-to-prepare-for-amazon-behavioral-interview/

    I would make sure you are telling stories that demonstrate leadership abilities with a large scope and an impactful outcome.