i’m prepping for upcoming superdays and my main blocker is freezing on behavioral questions. i’ve been told to “be authentic” a million times, but in practice i either ramble or give textbook answers that feel flat. i’ve started sharing draft stories with a few senior folks in our community and the unfiltered feedback has helped me focus on what actually moved the needle in my projects — not the fluff. for example, vets asked which metrics changed after my recommendation and pushed me to rework the ending of my ‘leadership’ story so it shows measurable impact. curious what specific prompts or critique you found most useful when vets tore your stories apart. how do you structure practice sessions so the feedback sticks next time i get that blank stare from an interviewer?
yeah, you’ll freeze because interviewers smell rehearsed answers a mile away. vets don’t want your powerpoint narrative — they want a single, memorable fact that proves you moved something. when i review stories i ask: what metric changed, who resisted, and how long 'til it mattered? trim everything else. practice under pressure: one minute, no notes. it’ll hurt, but you stop memorizing lines and start owning outcomes.
also stop trying to be clever. i’ve sat on panels where the guy used seven buzzwords and no concrete result. interviewers are lazy; give them one thing to remember — a percent, dollar, or timeline. vets will call out fluff quickly. accept it, rework it, then practice again until the blank feels embarrassing rather than inevitable.
i had the same problem last month. sharing raw bullet points with a senior in the group helped — they asked tough follow-ups and i rewrote the ending twice. practice answering in 60s. also try role-playing with a timer. it helped me calm down and keep answers shorter.
i still get nervous but mock sessions really helped. one vet forced me to say the impact in numbers and it clicked. do 2-3 mocks a week if you can.
freezing is almost always a symptom of two things: unclear ownership of the story and lack of an anchor metric. When I coach candidates, I first have them write a one-sentence outcome — e.g., “reduced month-end reconciliation time by 40%” — and keep that visible. Then we run three timed drills: 30s hook, 90s story, 30s takeaway. In mock sessions I emulate the brusque interviewer who interrupts with probing follow-ups; that pressure exposes gaps you won’t see in calm practice. Finally, request specific critique from veterans: ask them to mark anything that sounds like opinion versus fact. That feedback loop is what converts rehearsed answers into believable narratives. What’s one story you can reduce to a single, quantifiable sentence right now?
another thing that helped: ask vets to play the devil’s advocate and interrupt you during practice. they forced me to answer the “what did you actually do” question under cutthroat conditions — that reduced my blank moments a lot.
another tip: use simple flashcards keyed by metric not by title. seeing “$1.2m regained” triggers a specific sequence; seeing “leadership” often triggers a blob of generic content. vets tend to prefer metric-anchored prompts when giving feedback — try it and report back on what changed.