All pages in this guide
Start here
- Getting out ready: start here
- Is industry right for you?
- Roles and who hires economists
- The five-year timeline
Build your proof
Be memorable
Communicate like industry
Apply
Interviews
- How industry interviews work
- Behavioral interviews
- Technical interviews
- Coding and SQL
- Your research and interview day
Offers and first job
About
Other path
During the PhD · Interviews
Behavioral interviews
These interviews judge you as a colleague, not as a researcher. Three well-chosen stories, practiced out loud, will carry you through almost any question.
In a behavioral interview, the interviewer asks about specific situations from your past, because how you handled them is the best evidence of how you will handle similar situations in their company. They are not evaluating your research. They are evaluating you as a future colleague: whether you deliver, how you handle conflict and failure, how you think, and whether they would want you on their team.
Hiring is partly emotional. Managers are afraid of making a bad hire. Your goal in these interviews is to make at least one interviewer leave the room thinking “we need this person,” and willing to argue for you in the debrief. Solid but forgettable answers rarely do that. A memorable story does.
What every behavioral question is really testing
Behavioral questions come in endless variations, but almost all of them probe a small set of qualities. If you prepare stories that demonstrate these, you can answer nearly any question.
| Quality | What they want to see |
|---|---|
| Getting results | You set a goal, owned it and delivered a measurable outcome. |
| Handling conflict | You built agreement when people disagreed, without damaging the relationship. |
| Strategy and tradeoffs | You planned, weighed competing priorities and chose deliberately. |
| Persistence | You kept going when things went wrong, and adapted rather than just pushing harder. |
| Creativity | You found a smarter way, not just a harder-working way. |
| Learning fast | You picked up something new quickly and used it. |
| Communication | You explained complex work to people outside your field and they acted on it. |
Prepare three stories, not thirty
Choose three stories from your experience that, together, demonstrate every quality in the table at least once. Fewer stories are easier to practice until they are natural, and a strong story can answer many different questions depending on which part you emphasize. Aim to have at least one flexible, powerful story that covers four or more qualities by itself.
Choose unusual stories
The most common mistake is choosing an ordinary story. “I ran my dissertation analysis and it worked” or “I got feedback as a TA and changed my teaching” are things every PhD student has done. To test a story, ask: what is unusual about it? Look for the moment when you did something most people in your position would not have done. Stories from outside your PhD, such as a previous job, a business, a sports team or a community project, can be excellent if they show the qualities clearly.
Give it stakes and detail
A story becomes convincing through specifics. Who were the people you had to satisfy, and what did success mean to each of them? What convinced them to support you? What were the key moments? What did you sacrifice, and how did you know it was the right choice? If you tried something creative, how did you check that it actually worked? Include numbers that show scale: the number of students, the size of the dataset, the money involved, the time saved.
Include a real mistake
At least one story should include a genuine mistake or a weakness you worked on, and what you learned. Interviewers want humility and a desire to grow. “I work too hard” is not a real weakness. A mistake that raises a red flag, such as anything unethical or a story where you blame others, is worse than none.
How to tell a story: situation, task, action, result
Use a simple structure so the interviewer can follow you. Spend about two minutes in total.
Situation: one or two sentences of context. Task: what you were responsible for and why it was hard. Action: what you specifically did, using “I” rather than “we,” with the key decisions and why you made them. This should be the longest part. Result: what happened, with a number if possible, and what you learned.
Then stop and let them ask follow-up questions. Follow-ups are a good sign. They also reveal gaps in your story: if interviewers keep asking the same follow-up, add that detail to the next version.
A worked example
Question: “Tell me about a time you had to convince people who disagreed with you.”
Example answer, about two minutes
Situation. In my third year, I worked as a research assistant on a project with a city transportation department evaluating a new bus-lane program. The department’s internal team had already announced that the program cut commute times by 20%.
Task. When I rebuilt their analysis, I found that the 20% came from comparing the new routes to routes in other parts of the city that had very different traffic. My job was to tell them, without losing their trust or the data partnership our lab depended on.
Action. I did not open with “your number is wrong.” I first asked their lead analyst to walk me through the analysis, so I understood their reasoning. Then I built a comparison with similar routes before and after the change, and I put both versions on one page with a single chart. I met with the analyst privately before the group meeting, so she would not be surprised in front of her director, and I suggested she present the revised estimate herself as a refinement of her work.
Result. The revised effect was about 8%, still meaningful and much more defensible. The department used it in its budget request, the analyst became our main advocate inside the department, and they extended the data partnership for two more years. What I learned is that how you deliver a correction matters as much as the correction itself.
This one story demonstrates handling conflict, communication, strategy and results. With a different emphasis, it also answers “a time you made a mistake was discovered,” “a time you influenced without authority” and “a time you explained something technical to a non-technical audience.”
The question bank
These are the questions you should be ready for. Practice each one out loud with one of your three stories, and notice which story fits which question.
Motivation and fit
These come up in almost every interview, often first. They are not small talk. A weak answer here makes interviewers doubt you will accept an offer or stay.
B1Tell me about yourself.
TestsWhether you can summarize yourself clearly and connect it to this job.
Strong answerSixty to ninety seconds: your pitch, one or two highlights with results, and why you are interested in this role. Not your life story, not your dissertation abstract.
B2Why are you leaving academia? Why industry?
TestsWhether you are running toward something or away from something, and whether you will be happy here.
Strong answerPositive and specific: you want your work to change decisions quickly, you enjoy working with people outside economics, you liked seeing your internship analysis used. Never complain about academia or the academic job market.
B3Why this company? Why this team?
TestsWhether you did your homework and genuinely want this job.
Strong answerName something specific: a product you use and a question it raises for you, a problem the team is known for, a talk or blog post by someone on the team. Connect it to what you can contribute.
B4What kind of work energizes you, and what drains you?
TestsSelf-awareness and fit with the actual job.
Strong answerHonest, specific and consistent with the role. If the job involves many meetings, saying meetings drain you is honest but risky; say what you enjoy and how you manage the rest.
B5Where do you see yourself in five years?
TestsAmbition, and whether you plan to stay.
Strong answerGrowing in this kind of role, taking on larger and more strategic problems, possibly leading projects or people. Avoid naming a different career.
B6What will you miss about research, and how will you handle that?
TestsWhether you will be restless outside academia.
Strong answerAcknowledge something real, such as long uninterrupted thinking time, then explain why the tradeoff suits you and how you will keep learning.
Results and ownership
B7Tell me about the project you are most proud of.
TestsWhat you value and what you can deliver.
Strong answerA project with a clear outcome that someone used, your specific role in it and a number. Pick one with stakes beyond your own CV.
B8Tell me about a time you delivered under a tight deadline.
TestsPrioritization and reliability.
Strong answerWhat you chose not to do, how you communicated tradeoffs to the person waiting, and the result. Shows judgment, not just long hours.
B9Describe a time you took on something outside your responsibilities.
TestsInitiative.
Strong answerYou noticed a problem nobody owned, acted without being asked and made it better, while keeping others informed.
Conflict and collaboration
B10Tell me about a time you disagreed with a manager, adviser or colleague.
TestsWhether you can disagree productively and accept a decision.
Strong answerYou understood their view first, made your case with evidence, and either persuaded them or committed fully to their decision. Show respect for the other person throughout.
B11Tell me about a time you worked with a difficult person.
TestsMaturity and empathy.
Strong answerDescribe the behavior, not the person’s character. Explain what you did to understand their incentives and how the working relationship improved.
B12Describe a time you influenced a decision without having authority.
TestsPersuasion through evidence and relationships, which is most of an economist’s job in a company.
Strong answerHow you framed the analysis for the decision-maker’s goals, who you brought on board first and what changed as a result.
Failure, mistakes and feedback
B13Tell me about a time you failed.
TestsHonesty, ownership and learning.
Strong answerA real failure with real consequences, your share of the responsibility stated plainly, what you did immediately and what you changed afterward.
B14Tell me about a mistake in your analysis that someone else found, or that you found late.
TestsIntegrity and rigor, which matter enormously when decisions depend on your numbers.
Strong answerYou raised it quickly, corrected it transparently, assessed the impact and added a check so it would not happen again.
B15Tell me about the hardest feedback you have received.
TestsCoachability.
Strong answerSpecific feedback, your honest first reaction, what you changed and evidence that it worked.
B16What is your biggest weakness?
TestsSelf-awareness.
Strong answerA real but manageable weakness relevant to industry, such as over-polishing analysis before sharing it, and the concrete steps you are taking to improve.
Ambiguity, strategy and judgment
B17Tell me about a time you had to make a decision with incomplete information.
TestsComfort with ambiguity, which industry has much more of than research.
Strong answerHow you decided what was good enough, the assumptions you made explicit, the decision and how you checked it later.
B18Describe a time you had several competing priorities.
TestsStrategy and tradeoffs.
Strong answerThe criteria you used to rank them, who you consulted, what you dropped and why.
B19Tell me about a time you changed your approach midway through a project.
TestsAdaptability and judgment.
Strong answerThe signal that told you to change, how quickly you acted and the outcome compared with the original plan.
Communication, creativity and learning
B20Tell me about a time you explained a technical result to a non-technical audience.
TestsThe skill that matters most for economists in companies.
Strong answerWho the audience was, what you cut, the analogy or chart you used and the decision they made because of it.
B21Tell me about a time you found a creative solution to a problem.
TestsWorking smarter rather than harder.
Strong answerWhat the obvious approach was, why it was not good enough, what you did differently and how you verified it worked.
B22Tell me about a time you had to learn something new quickly.
TestsHow fast you will become useful.
Strong answerThe skill, the deadline, how you learned it efficiently and what you produced with it.
B23Tell me about a time you kept going when a project was not working.
TestsPersistence, and whether you can tell persistence from stubbornness.
Strong answerWhat went wrong, what you tried, what you changed and when you would have stopped.
How to practice
Write a short outline for each of your three stories, not a script. Then practice out loud with another person: a friend, a classmate, a career center adviser or someone who has interviewed candidates. After each answer, ask them which story impressed them most, whether anything sounded like a red flag, and what they wanted to ask next. Their follow-up questions show you what is missing. Record yourself once on your phone and listen back; most people discover they ramble in the situation and rush the action. Keep practicing until each story takes about two minutes and sounds like you talking, not reciting.