newgrad_neil · 3 replies
applying to a few Schwab entry-level SWE roles out of school and honestly the behavioral prep is stressing me out more than the coding. i don't have a lot of "tell me about a time you led a cross-functional initiative" type stories, most of my experience is internships and school projects.
does Schwab actually care about behavioral for new grads or is it more technical-focused at that level? any advice on what stories they actually want to hear?
they do care but they calibrate expectations by level. for new grads, school projects and internships are completely fair game. they're not expecting you to have managed a team, they're checking for self-awareness and communication. tell them about a hard problem you solved, what went wrong, and what you learned.
what recruiter_rita said. at new grad level the behavioral bar is: can you communicate clearly, do you reflect on your own work, are you coachable. that's it. use the internship stories. a summer project where something broke and you figured out why is a perfectly valid STAR story.
okay that's actually really reassuring. i have a story about a broken data pipeline at my internship that i've been discounting as 'too small'. sounds like maybe i should be using it.