What are the most common behavioural interview questions and how do I prepare?

Prepare six to eight real stories, not answers to specific questions. Behavioural questions recycle a small set of themes, and one good story usually answers three different questions with a change of emphasis — which is also why story-preparation sounds natural while answer-memorisation doesn't. **The themes that cover nearly everything:** 1. A conflict or disagreement with a colleague 2. A failure or mistake you made 3. A time you had to influence someone without authority 4. A difficult deadline or competing priorities 5. Something you learned quickly under pressure 6. A time you took initiative beyond your role 7. Difficult feedback you received 8. A project you're proud of and why Write one real story for each. Real, because follow-up questions expose invented ones instantly. **Structure each with STAR**: Situation (brief context), Task (what you needed to do), Action (what *you* specifically did — this is the bulk), Result (what happened, ideally quantified, plus what you learned). The errors that weaken otherwise good stories: - **Spending 80% on the situation.** Two sentences of context is plenty. They want your actions. - **Saying 'we' throughout.** They're assessing you, not your team. Use 'I' for what you did, 'we' for genuine collaboration. - **No result.** A story without an outcome doesn't demonstrate anything. - **A fake weakness for the failure question.** 'I care too much' fails the question and signals you'll be defensive about mistakes. Choose a real failure with a real lesson and a real change in behaviour — this question is testing self-awareness and accountability, and honest answers score well. **On the conflict question specifically**: never make the other person a villain. What they're screening for is whether you can disagree professionally. Describe the substantive disagreement, what you did to understand their position, and how it resolved — including if it resolved against you. **How to avoid sounding scripted**: practise the *beats* of the story, not the wording. Say it out loud a few times; don't write and memorise a paragraph. And listen to the actual question — candidates who've over-prepared often deliver the story they wanted rather than the one asked for, which is very noticeable. One detail worth adding: keep a running file of these moments as they happen at work. Trying to remember examples the night before an interview is why people freeze; a file you've been adding to for a year makes this preparation take an hour.