Google Behavioral Interview Questions and the XYZ Formula (With Examples)

The short answer: Google’s interview tips recommend answering behavioral questions with the STAR method and specific examples: its behavioral questions “are meant to elicit specific examples over ‘I always do X’.” The XYZ formula, from Google’s former head of people operations Laszlo Bock, is a way to state results: “Accomplished [X] as measured by [Y] by doing [Z].” It was written for resumes, but it makes a strong opening or closing line for an interview answer. Use STAR for the story and XYZ to state the result clearly. Below is what Google says about its interviews, the XYZ formula with examples, how to combine the two, and the questions to prepare.

What Google says about its interviews

Google’s own interview tips page gives candidates several pieces of advice:

• Use STAR for examples. Google lists Situation, Task, Activity and Result, and notes that “preparing a broad library of examples is key.”
• Show your thought process. “It’s not just about giving the ‘right’ answer — the interviewer will be looking to see the thought process versus the answer itself.”
• Clarify. Many questions are intentionally open-ended; rephrasing a question, asking for clarity, or taking a few moments to collect your thoughts is fine.
• Be concise. You have limited time, so craft “concise narratives while covering all the important information.”
• No AI during interviews. Google says Search and AI “are not permitted to be used during your interviews.”

The XYZ formula

In a 2014 article, Laszlo Bock, then Google’s senior vice president of people operations, gave this formula for describing accomplishments:

“Accomplished [X] as measured by [Y] by doing [Z].”

• X: what you achieved.
• Y: how it was measured, with a number and ideally a baseline.
• Z: what you did to make it happen.

His example contrasted “Studied financial performance of companies and made investment recommendations” with a version that names the result, the measure (a 12% improvement worth $1.2 million) and the method.

XYZ examples

• “Cut customer support response time from 24 hours to 6, by building an automatic triage system for incoming tickets.”
• “Increased trial-to-paid conversion by 18% in one quarter, by redesigning the onboarding emails based on user interviews.”
• “Reduced cloud costs by $40,000 a year, by identifying unused resources and setting up automatic shutdown for test environments.”
• “Raised my team’s on-time delivery from 70% to 95%, by introducing weekly planning and a shared task board.”

How to combine XYZ with STAR in an interview

STAR gives your story structure; XYZ makes the result unmistakable. A good pattern:

1. Open with the headline (XYZ): “I cut our support response time from 24 hours to 6 by building an automatic triage system.”
2. Tell the story (STAR): the situation, your task, what you did step by step, and the result.
3. Close with the result again, plus what you learned.

Example: “Tell me about a time you improved a process.”

An illustration, not a real candidate’s answer.

“I reduced our support team’s average response time from 24 hours to 6 by building an automatic triage system. Situation: we were a team of five handling about 400 tickets a day, and urgent issues were waiting behind simple questions. Task: my manager asked me to find a way to get urgent tickets answered faster without hiring. Action: I reviewed a month of tickets and found that about 30% were password resets and billing questions with standard answers. I worked with an engineer to tag tickets automatically by keywords and send standard answers for the simple ones, and I created an urgent queue for outages. Result: within six weeks, average response time fell to 6 hours, and urgent tickets were answered in under an hour. I learned to look at the data before asking for more people.”

Google behavioral questions to prepare

• Tell me about a time you had to influence someone without authority.
• Tell me about a time you disagreed with a teammate. How did you resolve it?
• Tell me about a time you failed. What did you learn?
• Tell me about a project with ambiguous requirements. What did you do?
• Tell me about a time you helped a teammate grow.
• Tell me about a time you had to make a decision with incomplete information.
• Tell me about a time you made something more inclusive for users or colleagues.
• Why Google?

See our guides to conflict, failure, leadership and decisions with limited information. For hypothetical questions (“What would you do if…”), Google’s advice applies: clarify, state your assumptions, and talk through your reasoning.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Google Careers, Interview tips. Read on 1 October 2026.
• Laszlo Bock, My Personal Formula for a Winning Resume, LinkedIn, 29 September 2014. Read on 1 October 2026.