Comment by shoo

when i interviewed candidates for software engineering roles in $non-tech-megacorp i was primarily interested in how folks did in the problem solving / coding / API design interviews.

but, we also asked some behavioural questions about past experiences. we don't say it explicitly, but we're looking for responses like --- can you say some words that suggest you have demonstrated initiative at work, or you can sometimes influence others and build support for a decision rather than unilaterally doing stuff without consultation (we're $megacorp, not $startup...) . you don't need to be able to talk at length about all aspects of your past job, but you do need to be able to offer a few examples of That Time When I Demonstrated Initiative, or That Time When I Influenced The Stakeholders that can be mashed into a digestible Situation / Task / (your) Action / Result format & where you can give a few reasonable answers to follow up questions from interviewers who probe and ask annoying questions like "so, what exactly were your responsibilities?"

another thing we'd be probing for is "growth mindset" type stuff. a bad response to "if you were in a similar situation in future, what would you do differently?" is "nothing, everything i did at $oldjob was optimal". a response that shows some reflection, a willingness to admit not everything you do is perfect, and concrete ideas for improvements to behaviour or process comes across much better. no need to enumerate all your worst failings, cherry-pick and offer one or two lesser ones.

for these kinds of behavioural questions based on past experience, we didn't really care if junior / intermediate hires struggled to give strong responses. We would be a lot more concerned about poor responses to these questions for engineering managers or other positions with a leadership component.

having a prepared short form answer to "why are you applying for a job here" is also a good idea.

if you have friends or acquaintances who regularly interview folks who you can hit up for a favour, you could see if they'd be willing to conduct a mock interview and then give you feedback about things you could improve on.