I went through Mastercard's interview process for a PM role and one thing that stood out was how structured the behavioral component was. Wanted to document this because it's different from some other large companies where behavioral rounds are almost an afterthought.
Mastercard has a published set of leadership competencies they call their "Success Factors" or something close to that. In every behavioral interview I had, the questions mapped directly to these. That's actually useful information because it means you can prepare systematically.
Questions I got asked (paraphrasing): Tell me about a time you had to influence without authority to get a cross-functional team aligned. Describe a situation where you had to make a decision with incomplete data. What did you do? Give me an example of a time you identified a risk that others had missed. Tell me about a project where things went differently than planned. How did you adapt? When have you had to push back on a stakeholder's request? Walk me through how you handled it.
They all have follow-up depth. The interviewer is following a structured scorecard and will probe: how big was the team, what was your specific role vs the team's role, what would you do differently now. It's a proper STAR format and they enforce it.
What they seem to value: Collaboration and listening. Multiple interviewers asked about times I disagreed but ultimately aligned with the group's direction. Customer/merchant focus. Mastercard is a B2B2C company at its core and they want to hear you think about the end user even when you're dealing with issuing bank partners or merchants. Ownership. Not just completing your lane but noticing when something adjacent is broken and doing something about it.
The behavioral round mattered a lot more than I expected going in. I felt like my coding and technical responses were decent, but I heard from my recruiter that the behavioral feedback was the most consistent thing in the debrief. They use it as a signal on "Mastercard culture fit" specifically.
For PM roles especially: you'll have a dedicated behavioral panel round (separate from the PM skills round), so don't treat it as a warmup.