Behavioral Interview Prep

Build a structured story bank of 7 polished STAR narratives mapped to company behaviors, plus reverse-interview questions.

Introduction

30 Second Summary

You have ten years of engineering experience, impressive projects, and strong technical instincts. But when someone asks "tell me about a time you led through ambiguity," all that experience can blur into a jumble of half-remembered situations with no clear punchline.

In this project, you will build a structured story bank of 7 polished STAR method narratives mapped directly to the company's five Behaviors, plus reverse-interview questions that signal genuine curiosity to your hiring manager.

What You'll Build

Picture opening a single document the morning of your interview, scanning to the story that fits the question your hiring manager just asked, and delivering a clear, quantified answer in under two minutes.

By the end of this project, you'll have:

7 fully-written STAR stories each tagged to one or two of the company's five Behaviors, ready to deliver in 90-120 seconds with measurable impact.
A coverage matrix confirming every Behavior is covered by at least two stories, so no question catches you off guard.
5 reverse-interview questions for the hiring manager that demonstrate research, seniority, and genuine interest in the team.
Secret Mission: Pressure-test every story by writing the hard follow-up questions an experienced hiring manager would ask, and prepare concise answers you can deliver in under 30 seconds.

Are there any prerequisites?

No technical prerequisites are needed. You only need a text editor (Notes, VS Code, or any writing tool) and familiarity with your own career history. The project guides you through structuring your experiences into interview-ready narratives.

Before We Start

Before diving into story writing, let's lock in what you're building and why it matters. Committing to the specific role and round context now focuses every story you write on what this interviewer actually cares about.

Map Expedia's Five Behaviors to Your Career

Map the Company's Five Behaviors to Your Career

The hiring manager round evaluates candidates against five specific Behaviors. Without knowing what these Behaviors are and how your career maps to them, your stories will sound generic instead of targeted.

In this step, you will create a structured document that maps each of the company's five Behaviors to real experiences from your career. This becomes the foundation for every STAR story you write in the steps ahead.

Create your Behavior mapping table

The interviewers explicitly assess your work style against the company's five Behaviors. Structuring your preparation around these Behaviors ensures every story you tell directly addresses what the interviewer is listening for.

In your text editor, create a new document titled Behavioral Story Bank.
At the top of the document, create a table with 4 columns: Behavior, Definition, My Experience 1, and My Experience 2.
Fill in the first two columns using the Behaviors and definitions below.

| Behavior | Definition | My Experience 1 | My Experience 2 |
|----------|-----------|-----------------|------------------|
| Traveler First | The Traveler First in every action and decision. | | |
| Think Big | We Think Big by being ambitious, seeing opportunities others don't, and quickly taking bold bets that create long-term value. | | |
| Operate with Excellence | We Operate with Excellence by being tenacious and driving improvements day after day. | | |
| Ownership Mindset | We Have an Ownership Mindset by looking at the business as if it's our own and thinking beyond our role and our metrics. | | |
| Succeed Together | We Succeed Together through collaboration and candor - challenging directly, debating hard, disagreeing when necessary, then committing fully to deliver as one team. | | |

Why start with definitions?

The interview guide states that understanding your work style against their Behaviors helps them evaluate your compatibility, your approach to challenges, and your potential long-term impact. Having the exact definitions in front of you prevents you from guessing what each Behavior means and ensures your stories hit the right notes.

Your document now has the structural backbone. Leave the experience columns empty for now.

Brainstorm experiences for each Behavior

Each Behavior needs at least 2 candidate experiences so you have options when writing full stories. Drawing from multiple roles shows breadth and consistency across your career.

For each of the 5 Behaviors, think of 2-3 moments from your career where you demonstrated that quality. Prioritize recent TCS/Apple experiences (they carry the most weight) but keep 1-2 older stories from Mobile Programming LLC, CQLSYS Technologies, or Councilsoft/ToXSL for variety.
Draw from your specific projects: JioMeet (enterprise video conferencing with end-to-end encryption, multi-device support), Taco Bell (geolocation-based offers, loyalty rewards, high-scale ordering), CarSwap (AI-driven real-time matching, secure transactions), Mealy (AI-based dietary recommendations, nutrition analytics), and ABA Taxi Mongolia (real-time driver tracking, dynamic pricing, cashless payments).

Use these prompts to jog your memory for each Behavior:

Traveler First: When did you make a decision specifically because it improved the end-user experience? Think of Taco Bell's geolocation-based offers or JioMeet's multi-device support where you advocated for a user-facing improvement over a technically easier path.
Think Big: When did you identify an opportunity others missed and act on it? Think of CarSwap's AI-driven matching engine, proposing the SwiftUI migration at TCS/Apple, or introducing modular architecture patterns on your team.
Operate with Excellence: When did you drive incremental improvements day after day? Think of performance optimizations on JioMeet (reducing crash rates, improving call quality), CI/CD automation with Fastlane and Jenkins, or code quality standards you raised through profiling with Instruments.
Ownership Mindset: When did you look beyond your assigned tasks and take responsibility for something bigger? Think of times you owned ABA Taxi's real-time tracking end-to-end or architected the Mealy recommendation engine without being asked.
Succeed Together: When did you collaborate with candor, disagree productively, or rally a cross-functional team? Think of technical debates at TCS/Apple about MVVM vs VIPER, mentoring junior developers at Mobile Programming LLC, or cross-team coordination on JioMeet's screen sharing feature.

Frame experiences in product language

This is a product company. When recalling TCS/Apple experiences, frame them in terms of users, metrics, and business impact rather than delivery timelines or client satisfaction. Think: "reduced crash rate for 2M users" rather than "delivered on time for the client."

Jot down quick notes in the margin of your document or on a scratch area. You do not need polished sentences yet. Just capture enough to identify each experience.

Write one-line summaries and fill the table

A one-line summary forces you to name the core action and its measurable result. If you cannot summarize an experience in one line, it is either too vague or too broad to become a focused STAR story.

For each Behavior, pick your 2 strongest experiences and write a one-line summary that names what you did and the quantified outcome.
Fill these summaries into the My Experience 1 and My Experience 2 columns of your table.

Follow this pattern for each summary:

[Action verb] + [what you did] + [at which role/company] + [quantified result]

Example:
"Led migration of legacy UIKit app to SwiftUI at TCS/Apple, reducing build times 40% and unblocking 3 feature teams."

What makes a strong one-liner?

A strong summary uses "I" language (not "we"), names a specific technology or framework, and ends with a number. Percentages, time saved, users impacted, bugs reduced, or teams unblocked all count as quantified results.

The STAR guidance emphasizes personal contribution. Even when describing team achievements, your summary should highlight what you specifically did.

Review your completed table. Every row should have both experience columns filled with a one-line summary that includes an action, a context, and a measurable result.

Before you move on, predict: which Behavior was hardest to fill with 2 strong experiences? That gap is exactly what you will address in Step 4 when you build your coverage matrix.

Stuck on finding 2 experiences for a Behavior?

If a Behavior only has one clear match, look at your experiences from a different angle. A single project often demonstrates multiple Behaviors. For example, an end-to-end project you owned (Ownership Mindset) may also show Operate with Excellence if you drove daily improvements during it.

If you are still stuck, cast a wider net to formative moments at Councilsoft or ToXSL. Early-career challenges where you stepped up often demonstrate Ownership Mindset or Think Big even at smaller scale.

Help me brainstorm experiences for a Behavior I'm struggling with.

Your Behavior mapping table is complete. You have a clear picture of which career moments align to what the company values most. Next up, you will turn these one-liners into full STAR stories that you can deliver confidently in under 2 minutes each.

Write Your First 3 STAR Stories

You have your Behaviors mapped and candidate experiences identified. Now it is time to transform those one-line summaries into fully-written stories that you can deliver under pressure.

The hiring manager round heavily evaluates ownership mindset and technical leadership. Without complete stories written out in advance, you will ramble and lose the interviewer's attention. Interviewers explicitly value detailed storytelling and want you to walk them through your thought process, the challenges you faced, and the measurable results of your decisions.

Set up the STAR structure template

The interview guide explicitly recommends the STAR method for structuring behavioral answers. Each letter maps to a specific part of your story that interviewers are listening for.

Below your Behaviors mapping table, add a new heading: STAR Stories.
Under that heading, write out the following template structure that you will use for all 7 stories:

## STAR Stories

### Story [#] - [Title]
Question: "[The behavioral question this answers]"
Behaviors: [Primary Behavior] + [Secondary Behavior]

**Situation** (2-3 sentences):
Set the scene. Team size, project scope, what was at stake.

**Task** (1-2 sentences):
What was YOUR specific responsibility? Use "I" not "we."

**Action** (3-5 sentences):
What steps did YOU take? Name specific technologies, frameworks, patterns.

**Result** (2-3 sentences):
Quantified outcome. Percentages, time saved, users impacted, teams unblocked.

Why this structure matters

The interview guide prompts interviewers to dig into each section specifically. For Situation, they want to know: "What was the exact situation? Who was involved? Why did the situation happen?" For Result, they look for: "What was the outcome? How did you feel about the result? What did you learn? How did this influence how you are today?"

Keep each story under 250 words total. You want to deliver it in 90-120 seconds, leaving room for follow-up questions.

Write Story 1: Ownership and end-to-end delivery

This story answers the question: "Tell me about a time you owned a project end-to-end, from design through production support." It maps to Ownership Mindset and Operate with Excellence.

Look at your Behaviors mapping table and find the experience you tagged under Ownership Mindset that has the strongest end-to-end arc (design through production).
Strong candidates from your portfolio: owning the JioMeet video conferencing platform (end-to-end encryption, screen sharing, multi-device support for millions of users), or architecting the Taco Bell ordering flow (customizable menus, loyalty rewards, geolocation integration).
Write the story header in your document:

### Story 1 - Ownership and End-to-End Delivery
Question: "Tell me about a time you owned a project end-to-end, from design through production support."
Behaviors: Ownership Mindset + Operate with Excellence

Write your Situation in 2-3 sentences. Name the team size, the project scope, and what was at stake. Draw from your most impactful TCS/Apple project where you drove the full lifecycle.
Write your Task in 1-2 sentences. State YOUR specific responsibility using "I" not "we."
Write your Action in 3-5 sentences. Name specific technologies, frameworks, and architectural patterns you used. Be concrete about what YOU did.
Write your Result in 2-3 sentences. Include a quantified outcome: percentages, time saved, users impacted, bugs reduced, or teams unblocked.

Frame for product thinking

This is a product company. When describing your TCS/Apple work, frame outcomes in product-company language: users impacted, metrics moved, iteration speed improved. Avoid consulting-speak like "delivered on time" or "met client requirements."

Read your completed Story 1 aloud. Does it take between 90 and 120 seconds to deliver?
Count the words. If you are over 250, cut filler sentences from your Action section first.

Write Stories 2 and 3: Technical leadership and handling ambiguity

Story 2 answers: "Describe a time you influenced a technical decision outside your direct control." It maps to Think Big and Succeed Together.

Write the Story 2 header in your document:

### Story 2 - Technical Leadership and Influence
Question: "Describe a time you influenced a technical decision outside your direct control."
Behaviors: Think Big + Succeed Together

Draw from a moment where you advocated for an architectural approach (MVVM, VIPER, modular design, protocol-oriented patterns) and convinced stakeholders. Strong candidates: pushing SwiftUI adoption at TCS/Apple, designing CarSwap's AI-driven real-time matching architecture, or championing modular design on JioMeet's multi-device codebase.
Write the full Situation, Task, Action, and Result sections following the same template as Story 1.
In your Action, emphasize how you collaborated and built consensus. This demonstrates the "challenging directly, debating hard, then committing fully" element of Succeed Together.

What makes a strong influence story?

The best influence stories show you changing a decision without having direct authority. Name who you convinced (a tech lead, an architect, a product manager) and what specific evidence or prototype you used to make your case.

Story 3 answers: "Tell me about a time you had to deliver under tight deadlines with unclear requirements." It maps to Operate with Excellence and Ownership Mindset.

Write the Story 3 header in your document:

### Story 3 - Handling Ambiguity
Question: "Tell me about a time you had to deliver under tight deadlines with unclear requirements."
Behaviors: Operate with Excellence + Ownership Mindset

Draw from a challenging sprint or release where requirements shifted mid-cycle. Strong candidates: delivering Mealy's AI-based recommendation engine under evolving dietary requirements, shipping ABA Taxi Mongolia's dynamic pricing with unclear specifications, or handling rapid scope changes on JioMeet during peak demand.
Write the full Situation, Task, Action, and Result sections.
In your Action, show how you created clarity for yourself and your team. Name the specific steps you took to reduce ambiguity (breaking the problem down, setting interim milestones, communicating tradeoffs to stakeholders).
End with a quantified Result that shows you delivered despite the uncertainty.

Review all three stories for quality

Before you move on, each story needs to pass three checks. This is the difference between a story that impresses and one that meanders.

Read each story aloud and time yourself. Each one should land between 90 and 120 seconds.
Count words for each story. If any story exceeds 250 words, trim the Action section first (it tends to bloat).
Check each Result section. It must contain at least one specific number: a percentage improvement, a count of teams unblocked, a time reduction, or users impacted.
Scan for "we" in your Task and Action sections. Replace with "I" wherever you were the driver. Expedia's guidance emphasizes personal contribution.

Struggling to quantify your results?

If you do not have exact metrics, use reasonable estimates with qualifiers: "reduced build times by approximately 40%" or "unblocked 3 feature teams who had been waiting 2 sprints." Approximate numbers are far stronger than vague claims like "improved performance significantly."

Help me quantify the results of my STAR stories for a behavioral interview.

What should your document look like now? You should see your original Behaviors mapping table at the top, followed by three complete STAR stories, each with a header showing the question it answers and the Behaviors it maps to.

✔️ I have 3 stories with quantified results

Excellent. Your leadership and ownership stories are ready. These three cover the questions most likely to come up in the first half of the hiring manager round.

ⓧ My stories feel too long or unfocused

The most common issue is an Action section that reads like a project journal. Pick only the 2-3 most impactful actions you took. Cut anything that does not directly lead to the Result.

Another common cause is a Situation that over-explains background. Your interviewer does not need full project history. Give just enough context for the Task to make sense.

You now have three polished stories covering ownership, technical leadership, and handling ambiguity. Next up, you will write four more stories that round out your bank with collaboration, conflict resolution, innovation, and mentoring angles.

Write Your Next 4 STAR Stories

You now have 3 polished stories that showcase ownership, technical leadership, and composure under ambiguity. Those are strong solo wins. But the hiring manager round is 60 minutes long, and with rapport-building and your reverse questions, expect 5-7 behavioral questions total.

That means you need stories covering collaboration and conflict resolution, not just individual technical excellence. The Succeed Together behavior explicitly values "challenging directly, debating hard, disagreeing when necessary, then committing fully to deliver as one team." In this step, you will write 4 more stories that prove you can do exactly that.

Write Story 4: cross-functional collaboration

Hiring managers want to see how you work across team boundaries. This story targets the question: "How do you approach collaboration with product managers and designers?"

Below your Story 3 in the document, add a new heading: Story 4 - Cross-Functional Collaboration.
Add the behavior tag line: Maps to: Succeed Together + Traveler First.
Draw from a time you partnered with non-engineering stakeholders to ship a user-facing feature. Strong candidates: collaborating with PMs and designers on Taco Bell's loyalty rewards and geolocation offers, coordinating with QA on JioMeet's screen sharing across devices, or working with product on CarSwap's secure transaction flow.
Write the full STAR narrative using the same structure from Step 2.

Why does Traveler First apply here?

Cross-functional collaboration is how user-facing improvements actually ship. By showing you partner with PMs and designers to deliver a better traveler experience, you demonstrate that the end-user outcome drives your decisions, not just the code.

Use these prompts to guide your Situation and Action sections:

Situation: What was the cross-team project? Who were the non-engineering stakeholders? What was at stake for the user?
Action: How did YOU bridge the gap between engineering constraints and product/design goals? Name specific tradeoffs you navigated.
Result: Quantify the outcome. Feature adoption rate, user satisfaction improvement, time-to-ship, or stakeholder feedback.

Keep it under 250 words. Read it back and confirm you used "I" rather than "we" when describing your personal contribution.

Write Story 5: conflict resolution

This story targets the question: "Tell me about a time you had a conflict with a colleague. How did you resolve it?" This maps directly to Succeed Together, which values candor and debating hard before committing fully.

Add a new heading: Story 5 - Conflict Resolution.
Add the behavior tag line: Maps to: Succeed Together.
Draw from a technical disagreement you navigated. This could be an architecture debate, a code review conflict, or a tool choice disagreement at TCS/Apple or an earlier role.
Write the full STAR narrative.

Show resolution, not victory

The best conflict stories show you advocated for your position with data, listened to the other perspective, and reached a resolution that served the team. Avoid framing the other person as wrong. Show that you "committed fully" once the decision was made, even if it was not your original preference.

Read Stories 4 and 5 back. Confirm each one follows the Situation (2-3 sentences), Task (1-2 sentences), Action (3-5 sentences), Result (2-3 sentences) structure.
Check that both stories end with a quantified result. If a number feels forced, use a qualitative-but-concrete result like "adopted as the team standard" or "zero escalations in the following quarter."

Write Stories 6 and 7: innovation and mentoring

Your final two stories round out the bank with proactive initiative and team development. These demonstrate that you operate above your role level, a key signal for senior candidates.

Story 6 targets: "Tell me about a time you identified an opportunity others missed and acted on it."

Add a new heading: Story 6 - Thinking Big / Innovation.
Add the behavior tag line: Maps to: Think Big + Ownership Mindset.
Draw from a proactive improvement you initiated that was not assigned to you. Strong candidates: building CarSwap's AI-driven real-time matching engine, introducing Fastlane and GitHub Actions CI/CD automation at TCS/Apple, proposing Mealy's AI-based dietary analytics feature, or championing App Clips or Widgets adoption before it was on the roadmap.
Write the full STAR narrative under 250 words.

What makes a story Think Big?

Think Big is defined as "being ambitious, seeing opportunities others don't, and quickly taking bold bets that create long-term value." Your story should show that you spotted something others overlooked and took initiative without waiting for permission.

Story 7 targets: "How do you help junior engineers grow?"

Add a new heading: Story 7 - Mentoring and Team Development.
Add the behavior tag line: Maps to: Succeed Together + Operate with Excellence.
Draw from your leadership and mentoring experience. Strong candidates: leading and optimizing the development team at Mobile Programming LLC, conducting in-depth code reviews and architectural discussions at TCS/Apple, mentoring junior iOS developers on SOLID principles and modular design, or establishing engineering standards through TDD and automated testing practices.
Write the full STAR narrative under 250 words.

Read Stories 6 and 7 back. Confirm each follows the STAR structure and lands under 250 words.
For Story 7, double-check that you named the specific impact on the mentee. Vague claims like "they improved" are weaker than "they independently shipped their first feature within 3 weeks."

Before you move on, scroll through all 7 stories in your document. Do you think each one could be delivered in under 2 minutes? Try reading one aloud and timing yourself.

Each story should take 90-120 seconds when spoken at a natural pace. If any story runs long, trim the Situation to 2 sentences and tighten the Action to focus on your top 3 decisions.

Struggling to find a mentoring example?

Mentoring does not have to mean a formal program. Code review feedback that leveled someone up, a lunch-and-learn you led, or pairing with a new hire on their first PR all count. Pick the example with the clearest before-and-after for the other person.

Help me brainstorm a mentoring story from my experience.

Your story bank now has full coverage across solo wins and team dynamics. Next up, you will build a coverage matrix to confirm every Behavior is accounted for and spot any gaps before your interview.

Build Your Coverage Matrix and Identify Gaps

You now have 7 stories in your bank. Quantity alone does not guarantee you are prepared for every question the hiring manager might ask.

If three of your stories all demonstrate the same Behavior and another Behavior is barely covered, one targeted question will leave you scrambling. In this step, you will build a visual coverage matrix that reveals gaps instantly and gives you time to fix them before your interview.

Create your Coverage Matrix

Each of your 7 stories already has Behavior tags assigned. A matrix compiles those tags into one view so you can spot thin coverage at a glance.

Scroll to the bottom of your story bank document, below Story 7.
Add a new heading: Coverage Matrix.
Create a table with 6 columns: Story, Traveler First, Think Big, Operate w/ Excellence, Ownership Mindset, Succeed Together.
Add 7 rows, one per story.

Go through each story and place an X in the columns matching the Behavior tags you already assigned.
Mark both primary and secondary Behaviors for each story.

Your matrix should look something like this (your X placements will reflect your own story tags):

| Story   | Traveler First | Think Big | Operate w/ Excellence | Ownership Mindset | Succeed Together |
|---------|---|---|---|---|---|
| Story 1 |   |   | X | X |   |
| Story 2 |   | X |   |   | X |
| Story 3 |   |   | X | X |   |
| Story 4 | X |   |   |   | X |
| Story 5 |   |   |   |   | X |
| Story 6 |   | X |   | X |   |
| Story 7 |   |   | X |   | X |

What does this matrix show you?

Each column represents one of the company's five Behaviors. A healthy matrix has at least 2 X marks in every column. That means no matter which Behavior the interviewer probes, you have more than one story to draw from.

Each row shows how versatile a single story is. A story that covers 2 Behaviors gives you flexibility to pivot if a follow-up question shifts direction.

Count your columns and identify gaps

Before you count, take a guess. Which Behavior do you think has the thinnest coverage based on the stories you wrote?

Count the X marks in each column of your matrix.
Check: does every column have at least 2 X marks?

If you followed the story tags from Steps 2 and 3, you will likely notice that Traveler First has the thinnest coverage. Only Story 4 maps to it directly.

If any column has fewer than 2 X marks, pick one of your existing stories that could incorporate a user or customer focus angle.
Revise that story's Action or Result section to explicitly mention the end-user impact (traveler experience, customer satisfaction metric, user-facing quality improvement).
Add an X to that story's row under the thin column.

Reframing for Traveler First

Almost any technical improvement can connect to the end user. A performance optimization reduced load times for travelers. A modular architecture enabled faster feature delivery that travelers benefited from. Look for the user-impact thread in stories you already have.

Also check each row. If any story maps to only 1 Behavior, consider whether you can reframe it to show a secondary Behavior.
Update the X marks in your matrix after any revisions.
Confirm that every column now has at least 2 X marks.

Stuck on a gap?

If you cannot reframe an existing story to cover a thin Behavior, swap in a different experience from your initial brainstorm table at the top of your document. Your original Behaviors mapping table listed 2-3 candidate experiences per Behavior for exactly this reason.

Help me reframe one of my STAR stories to better demonstrate Traveler First without losing the original Behavior it covered.

Write your Pivot Notes

The matrix shows breadth. Pivot Notes help you make real-time decisions during the interview about which story to pull when.

Below your Coverage Matrix, add a new heading: Pivot Notes.
Identify your strongest story. This is the one you want to lead with if the interviewer opens with "tell me about yourself" or "walk me through a project you're proud of." Write its number and a one-line reason why it is your strongest.
Identify your most versatile story. This is the one that covers the most Behaviors (most X marks in its row). It is your fallback for unexpected questions. Write its number and the Behaviors it covers.
Identify your weakest Behavior. Even after fixing gaps, one Behavior will feel less natural to you. Name it and write a one-sentence plan for how you will handle a direct question about it.

Why note your weakest Behavior?

Hiring managers often probe the area where your resume gives the least signal. Naming your own weak spot in advance means you will not freeze if the interviewer asks about it. Your plan might be as simple as "pivot to Story 4 and emphasize the customer angle in the Result."

Review your Pivot Notes. Read through all three entries and confirm each one names a specific story number and a concrete reason or plan.

Your story bank document now contains the Behaviors mapping table, all 7 STAR stories, the Coverage Matrix, and your Pivot Notes. Open the document from the top and scroll through to confirm all four sections are present.

✔️ I see all four sections in my document

Your story bank is structurally complete. Every Behavior has at least 2 stories backing it, and you know exactly which story to reach for first.

ⓧ I'm missing a section or a Behavior is still under-covered

Scroll through your document and check for these four sections in order:

Behaviors mapping table (from Step 1).
Stories 1-7 (from Steps 2 and 3).
Coverage Matrix with X marks in every column.
Pivot Notes with strongest, most versatile, and weakest entries.

If a Behavior column still has fewer than 2 X marks, return to your original brainstorm table and find an experience you can write up or reframe.

You now have a complete, gap-free story bank with strategic notes on how to deploy each story. Next up, you will prepare the questions that turn your interview from an evaluation into a genuine two-way conversation with Lucas.

Prepare Your Reverse-Interview Questions for Lucas

Prepare Your Reverse-Interview Questions

Your coverage matrix confirms that every Expedia Behavior is backed by at least two stories. You are ready for whatever behavioral question Lucas throws at you.

Now it is time to flip the script. The last 5-10 minutes of a hiring manager round belong to you. Expedia's own interview guide says to prepare questions because "these conversations are a great opportunity for you to ask about what's important to you." Generic questions like "what does a typical day look like?" waste this window. Questions grounded in Expedia's actual technology and Behaviors signal that you have done your homework and are evaluating the opportunity with the same rigor they are evaluating you.

Understand why reverse-interview questions matter at the senior level

The hiring manager round evaluates your enthusiasm, cultural fit, and curiosity about the team. Lucas is assessing whether you are someone who thinks critically about where they work, not just someone looking for any job.

What makes a strong reverse-interview question?

A strong question does three things at once. It references something specific about Expedia (their platform unification, their Behaviors, their AI/ML focus). It signals your seniority by asking about architecture, team dynamics, or technical direction rather than onboarding logistics. It is genuinely something you want to know to evaluate whether this role fits your career.

Weak questions sound like they came from a "top 10 interview questions" article. Strong questions sound like they came from someone who read Expedia's careers page and thought about what working there would actually feel like day-to-day.

Add a Reverse-Interview Questions section to your document

You will add this as the final section of your story bank so everything lives in one place.

Scroll to the bottom of your story bank document, below the Pivot Notes section.
Add a new heading: Reverse-Interview Questions for Lucas.
Below the heading, you will write 5 numbered questions. Each question gets a follow-up line starting with Intent: that explains why you are asking it.

Write your 5 questions across these categories

Each question should target a different facet of working at Expedia. Use the categories below as your guide, but write the questions in your own voice so they feel authentic when you ask them aloud.

Write Question 1 - Team and Collaboration. Ask about how the iOS or mobile team collaborates with platform teams. You could reference Expedia's Succeed Together behavior ("collaboration and candor - challenging directly, debating hard, disagreeing when necessary, then committing fully") and ask how that shows up in daily engineering work.
Below it, write your Intent: line. Example: "I want to understand how cross-team collaboration actually works here, since my TCS/Apple work involved heavy coordination across distributed teams."

Write Question 2 - Technical Direction. Ask about their approach to platform unification, SwiftUI adoption, or modular architecture on mobile. Expedia has explicitly stated they "modernized our technology, moving from separate systems to a single platform." Ask where the mobile team sits in that journey.
Add the Intent: line explaining what you hope to learn. Example: "I want to gauge how much greenfield vs. legacy work I would encounter and whether my SwiftUI migration experience is directly applicable."

Write Question 3 - Ownership and Autonomy. Ask about how much architectural decision-making happens at the senior IC level vs. the team lead level. Reference Expedia's Ownership Mindset behavior ("looking at the business as if it's our own and thinking beyond our role") and ask how that translates into technical autonomy for senior engineers.
Add the Intent: line. Example: "I want to understand the scope of influence for senior ICs here, since I thrive when I can own decisions beyond just my assigned tickets."

Write Question 4 - Growth and Impact. Ask what success looks like in the first 6 months for someone in this role. This signals that you are already thinking about delivering value, not just getting onboarded.
Add the Intent: line. Example: "I want to calibrate my ramp-up expectations and understand what milestones Lucas considers meaningful early wins."

Write Question 5 - Culture and Values. Ask how one of the Expedia Behaviors manifests specifically on the mobile team. For example: "How does Think Big show up on the mobile team specifically? What is a recent example of a bold bet the team took?"
Add the Intent: line. Example: "I want to see if the stated values match daily reality and whether the team actually has space for ambitious initiatives."

Keep questions conversational

Read each question out loud. If it sounds like a rehearsed script, rewrite it until it sounds like something you would naturally ask a colleague over coffee. Lucas will sense the difference between genuine curiosity and performative preparation.

Review your questions for seniority signals

Before you finalize, scan all 5 questions against this quick filter.

Read through your 5 questions and confirm each one passes these checks:
Does it reference something specific about Expedia (a Behavior, their platform strategy, their AI/ML focus, their travel marketplace)? If it could be asked at any company, rewrite it.
Does it signal seniority? Questions about architecture, team dynamics, or technical direction are senior-level. Questions about onboarding logistics, PTO policy, or basic role expectations are not.
Is it genuinely something you want to know? If Lucas gave a thorough answer, would it actually change how you feel about the role? If not, replace it with something you care about.

Why intent notes matter

The intent note is not for Lucas. It is for you. When you review your story bank the morning of the interview, the intent note reminds you WHY you are asking the question. This keeps you from asking it robotically and helps you respond naturally to Lucas's answer with a genuine follow-up.

You should now have 5 numbered questions in your document, each with a one-line intent note below it. Read them once more from top to bottom. Do they collectively paint a picture of someone who is thoughtful, senior, and genuinely excited about Expedia's mobile engineering work?

Questions feeling too generic?

If a question could be asked at any tech company without changing a word, it is too generic. Add a specific Expedia reference: name one of the five Behaviors, mention their platform unification effort, or reference their singular technology platform powered by data and machine learning.

Help me make my reverse-interview questions more specific to Expedia's engineering culture and technology.

Your story bank is now complete. You have 7 structured stories mapped to every Expedia Behavior, a coverage matrix confirming no gaps, and 5 thoughtful questions that will leave Lucas with the impression of a senior engineer who has done their research. Next up, a Secret Mission that will pressure-test your stories against the hardest follow-ups a hiring manager can throw.

Secret mission

Prepare for Hard Follow-Ups

Experienced hiring managers don't stop at your initial STAR answer. They probe deeper with follow-ups like 'What would you do differently?' and 'How did you measure success?' In this mission, you'll pressure-test every story so nothing catches you off guard on Monday.

Clean Up Your Resources

This project runs entirely locally, so there are no ongoing costs or cloud resources to manage. Your story bank document lives on your machine in whatever text editor you used.

Resources you used:

Your local story bank document ("Expedia Behavioral Story Bank - Rishabh Arora").

Keep everything running

No action needed. Choose this if you want to keep refining your stories before Monday's interview with Lucas.

Your story bank document stays where it is in your text editor.
Consider reading through your stories one more time the night before and the morning of your interview.
You can share the document with a friend or mentor for feedback on clarity and impact.

Pause - I'll come back to this later

Save your document and close the editor to free up screen space. You can reopen it any time before your interview.

Save your story bank document if you have not already.
Close your text editor.
Your document remains on your machine for when you are ready to review again.

Delete - I don't want to use this again

Remove your story bank document entirely. Only choose this if you are certain you no longer need these stories.

Delete the story bank document from your text editor or file system.
If you saved it to your Desktop, move it to the Trash (macOS) or Recycle Bin (Windows) and empty it.

Nice Work!

You now have a complete behavioral interview story bank ready for Monday's 60-minute hiring manager round with Lucas at Expedia.

You've learned how to:

Create 7 structured STAR stories mapped to Expedia's five Behaviors, each deliverable in under 2 minutes with quantified results and clear personal contribution.
Build a coverage matrix confirming every Behavior is covered by at least 2 stories, so no question from Lucas catches you unprepared.
Prepare 5 reverse-interview questions grounded in Expedia's mission, technology, and team culture that signal seniority and genuine curiosity.
Secret Mission: Pressure-tested every story with hard follow-up Q&As, building the muscle to handle adversarial probing without hesitation.

Ready to quiz yourself?