How to prepare for a Netflix behavioral interview
Netflix’s new grad and internship pages say interviewers evaluate behavioral skills, and that you may be asked which parts of the culture memo resonate with you, or don’t. The memo lists what Netflix values in colleagues: selflessness, judgment, candor, creativity, courage, inclusion, curiosity and resilience. Read it, then prepare true stories that show those behaviors, such as feedback you gave and received and decisions you made with incomplete information, and practice telling them out loud.
What Netflix says its interviews look for
Netflix’s new grad and internship pages describe a take-home assessment followed by two or three rounds of interviews, in which interviewers evaluate technical (if applicable), role-specific and behavioral skills (Netflix new grads; Netflix internships). Both pages add: “You may be asked about which aspects of the memo resonate most with you – or not – so be prepared.” They cover early-career roles, so for an experienced role, ask your recruiter what to expect.
The culture memo on Netflix’s jobs site rests on four principles: the Dream Team, People Over Process, Uncomfortably Exciting, and Great and Always Better (Netflix culture memo). It calls the strengths Netflix looks for in colleagues “the values we value”:
- Selflessness: seeking what’s best for Netflix rather than yourself or your team, and helping others succeed.
- Judgment: long-term solutions over short-term fixes, wise decisions despite ambiguity, and data that informs intuition.
- Candor: giving and receiving feedback, and admitting mistakes openly.
- Creativity: welcoming new ideas and persisting toward more innovative solutions.
- Courage: risking failure or challenging the status quo in pursuit of excellence.
- Inclusion: recognizing your biases and working to counteract them.
- Curiosity: learning quickly, and caring about other people’s ideas as much as your own.
- Resilience: adapting quickly and making tough decisions without long delay.
The memo also describes how decisions get made. An “informed captain” owns each significant decision and is expected to seek out different opinions, which Netflix calls farming for dissent. Once a decision is made, everyone, including people who argued for another approach, is expected to disagree, then commit.
How to prepare your stories for Netflix
- Read the whole memo first. It is long and specific about how people are expected to work, which is what behavioral questions test.
- Prepare feedback in both directions. One story where you gave someone hard feedback and one where you received it and changed. The memo notes that feedback to someone more senior is especially hard, so that story is worth having.
- Prepare a decision you owned. A call you made with incomplete information: who you asked, what you weighed and how it turned out.
- Prepare a disagreement you committed to. A time the decision went against you and you still worked to make it succeed.
- Admit a real mistake. Candor in the memo includes admitting mistakes openly and sharing what you learned. Pick one with consequences and say what you changed.
Which MockRun practice areas match Netflix’s values
MockRun groups practice by Amazon’s Leadership Principles. They are Amazon’s, not Netflix’s, but most of the memo’s values have a close match. Ours is below:
- Judgment: Dive Deep and Are Right, A Lot.
- Candor and inclusion: Earn Trust.
- Courage: Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit.
- Selflessness: Ownership, and Hire and Develop the Best.
- Creativity: Invent and Simplify.
- Curiosity: Learn and Be Curious.
- Resilience: Bias for Action.
See what interviewers listen for under each principle, or start a practice session on judgment, candor and courage.
Practice questions on Netflix’s values
MockRun wrote these prompts around the memo’s values. They aren’t Netflix’s interview questions.
- Tell me about feedback you gave to someone more senior than you.
- Describe a decision you made without all the information you wanted.
- Tell me about a time you argued against a plan and then helped it succeed.
- Describe a mistake you made and how you told others about it.
- Tell me about a time you put another team’s goal ahead of your own.
- Situation
- Our design lead planned to launch a new checkout flow before the holiday sale. In testing, three of eight users couldn’t find the gift option.
- Action
- I hesitated for two days because she was senior to me. Then I told her in private and showed her the recordings. I said I might be wrong about how much it mattered and proposed a one-week delay. She explained that the sale date was fixed, so we agreed to launch on time and add a visible gift checkbox in the first week.
- Result
- The checkbox shipped on day four, and gift orders matched the previous year.
- Reflection
- I had waited two days to raise it because she was senior to me. Now I raise a concern on the day I see it.
Written for this guide. The people and numbers are invented.
Practice out loud before your Netflix interview
Stories about values are easy to tell vaguely. MockRun asks follow-ups about the story you just told, such as who you spoke to, what they said and what you did next, and the debrief quotes your answer to show what was missing. You can answer out loud or type.
MockRun is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by Netflix, and its questions are not Netflix’s. For a decision that went against you, read the disagree and commit example. For feedback on your practice answers, see what useful behavioral interview feedback looks like.
Common questions
Should I read the Netflix culture memo before my interview?
Yes. Netflix’s new grad and internship pages tell candidates: “You may be asked about which aspects of the memo resonate most with you – or not – so be prepared.” The memo also lists the values Netflix looks for in colleagues, so prepare true stories that show those behaviors rather than repeating its wording.
What values does Netflix look for?
The culture memo lists selflessness, judgment, candor, creativity, courage, inclusion, curiosity and resilience as “the values we value”. It also describes farming for dissent before a decision and committing to it afterwards, even if you argued against it.
