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Not every interview is behavioral. Some roles — and increasingly many roles —
include technical assessments or case interviews. These test how you think under
pressure. And here's the liberating truth: they care more about your process
than your answer. I've seen candidates give wrong answers and get hired because
their thinking was brilliant. And I've seen candidates give correct answers and
get rejected because they couldn't explain how they got there.
Four steps. Clarify, structure, execute, validate. Step one — clarify. Before
you touch anything, ask questions. What are the constraints? What are the
assumptions? What does success look like? This isn't stalling — it's what senior
professionals do. Jumping straight into a solution without understanding the
problem is a junior signal.
Step two — structure. Before you solve, outline. "I'm going to approach this in
three parts." This gives the interviewer a roadmap of your thinking and gives
you a framework to organize your work.
Step three — execute. Work through your approach methodically and narrate your
thinking. "I'm choosing this approach because..." "I'm noticing that this
variable affects..." The interviewer can't evaluate what they can't hear.
Step four — validate. Check your work. Consider edge cases. Acknowledge
limitations. "This solution handles the primary case, but I'd want to test it
against these edge cases...
You will encounter questions you can't answer. This is by design — interviewers
want to see how you handle the unknown. Never bluff. Instead, demonstrate
reasoning. "I haven't worked with that specific tool, but based on my experience
with similar technologies, I'd approach it by..." This shows intellectual
honesty and transferable thinking — both of which are more valuable than
memorized knowledge.
Technical and case interviews are thinking exercises, not knowledge tests.
Clarify, structure, execute, validate. Think out loud. And never, ever fake it.
Next lesson, we cover the questions YOU should ask — the ones that make
interviewers want to hire you.