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How to best answer "Tell me about a time you worked on a team or across teams"

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Entry-Level Software Engineer at Taro Community22 days ago

In a recent behavioral mock interview, I was asked the question "Tell me about a time you worked on a team."

From my understanding, the question's focus appears to be on teamwork and collaboration (i.e. do you work well in a team setting?).

A story I had was when I was working on a call history feature. The call was managed by the call center team, and I needed to integrate their API into our backend code to pull this data in real time. When I was trying to test the integration, I noticed the data that was being returned was incomplete, leading to difficulties with integration process.

  • I first analyzed the structure of the data returned as the API response. This analysis revealed that the API was lacking key fields such as agent name and call duration necessary for our dashboard.
  • I recognized solving this issue would require action from the call center team, so I scheduled a meeting with the lead engineer from the call center team and worked together with him to extend the API design to return the missing fields in real time.
  • After the meeting, I maintained close communication with the call center engineer to make sure the changes worked as expected. I also scheduled joint testing sessions where we verified over zoom calls that the changes worked seamlessly and did not disrupt existing systems.
  • In the end, I successfully integrated the API, enabling the call history feature to function smoothly in real time. My collaboration also improved the call center API, making it more robust and easier to implement for other developers on our team in future projects. The project taught me the importance of proactive communication when it comes to working across teams.

Do you think this answer is on the right track? I would gladly appreciate any thoughts or feedback on this answer.

Big thanks for reading through all of this - I know it is a very long post and I really appreciate your time!

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    Tech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
    22 days ago

    Wow, if "Tell me about a time you worked on a team" is exactly how they phrased the question, that's kind of bad 🤣. I know the spirit behind the question, but engineers are literally always working on a team in a corporate setting, so it's a weird phrasing. Personally I would have asked it this way: "Describe a time where you demonstrated stellar teamwork."

    Anyways, I think your story is good! It would definitely clear the bar for a junior engineer. If I were to give this question, the main signal I would look out for is the engineer working with other engineers (especially those who they're unfamiliar with) and demonstrating strong communication/empathy. Having some semblance of a problem/obstacle to overcome together is great too.