Behavioral prompt: Exceeding customer expectations and simplifying complex problems

Context

You are in a software engineering technical screen. Provide two concise, metrics-backed STAR responses that highlight your personal impact.

Tasks

1. Exceeding customer expectations

• Situation and task: What was the customer need or pain? What were you aiming to achieve?
• Actions: What did you do beyond the expected scope? Include technical steps (investigation, design, implementation, experiments).
• Measurable outcomes: Quantify impact (latency, defect rate, support tickets, engagement, revenue, cost).
• Validation of customer delight: How did you confirm delight (CSAT/NPS, adoption, repeat usage, A/B test, qualitative feedback)?

2. Simple solution to a complex problem

• Situation and problem: What made it complex (scale, ambiguity, dependencies, constraints)?
• Alternatives considered: Briefly list options you evaluated.
• Simple approach chosen and why sufficient: Why did it meet requirements now?
• Trade-offs: What you gave up, risks, and mitigations.
• Results: Quantified outcome and follow-ups.

Timebox each example to about 2–3 minutes; emphasize data and decisions.