Went through the VMware loop last fall after a two-year career gap and paid close attention to the behavioral side because I was more nervous about that than the coding. Sharing what I observed.
VMware has a set of company values (post-Broadcom, they still refer to these in interviews even though the parent company has its own culture). The interviewers asked directly about: customer focus, learning agility, inclusion, and execution under constraints.
Behavioral questions I got: Tell me about a time you had to push back on a decision made by leadership. What was your approach and what happened? Describe a situation where you had to pick up a new skill quickly to unblock your team. What did you learn and how fast? Tell me about a project that failed or was cancelled. What did you learn? How have you handled a conflict with a peer engineer where you had different technical opinions? Describe your approach when requirements shifted midway through a project.
Not many "tell me your greatest weakness" type questions. They leaned heavily on situational and challenge-based STAR prompts.
What stood out to me: They wanted specifics. Generic "I used good communication" answers visibly didn't land. Interviewers interrupted twice to ask "can you give me a specific example?" The bar for behavioral is concrete stories, not general philosophy.
Gap question: They did ask about my career gap. I explained caregiving. The interviewer moved on cleanly. No awkwardness, no probing. One data point but encouraging.
Prep tip: If you have a story about navigating ambiguity or changing requirements in a technical context, that seems to score well. The culture post-Broadcom has a lot of "we're figuring things out" energy and they seem to want people who handle uncertainty without melting down.