Maybe it’s just me, but whenever I hear a question like “tell me about a time…” - I simply can’t remember. These routine job-related things just don’t stick out in my mind as something to catalog for some future contrived performance and disappear out of my mind together with other uninteresting and unimportant noise, like a name of the clerk at the DMV or what was advertised during the commercial break when I turned on the TV in my hotel room.
I suspect that people who readily jump in with an answer - are the ones you claim to guard against, those who drilled and trained for giving responses to these interviews.
Essentially every single interview/recruiting process is selecting for someone who is good at going through the process, rather than selecting for someone who is actually good for the job
It’s pretty frustrating and incredibly time consuming
You could be the perfect person for a job, but if you haven’t practiced interviewing for a while, you’ll most likely not get the job
And the opposite is true. After enough interviews, you’ll get practice, gain confidence and will start looking like the better candidate, even if you are not the best for the job
I can still remember an interview that consisted of nothing but those questions and I hadn't prepared answers so I either answered "I can't think of a time sorry" or tried to recall one on the spot. Interview was a train-wreck.
Since then I have a bunch written down that I review before I interview. It's like leetcode questions, if you are going to get them during the interview you study for them. You don't expect to naturally solve them without prep.
… which just serves to reinforce the point that the interview becomes a rehearsed dog and pony show where interviewer asks contrived questions that are compiled and put into an “interview prep course” shilled on Linked In, and interviewee “references notes” they prepared from said course on how to best answer said questions. All done while claiming to look for “genuine insight”.
I suspect that people who readily jump in with an answer - are the ones you claim to guard against, those who drilled and trained for giving responses to these interviews.