This was for a Full-stack Developer intern position at Visa, with the expectation of working on-site three days a week (Tuesday to Thursday). Going in, I thought this particular round would be purely behavioral. But right at the start, the interviewer said:
“for the software engineer position it should be behavior plus coding.”

For a moment, my heart sank. I explained that I had been told otherwise, and luckily the interviewer responded:
“That’s okay, we can stick with behavioral today and schedule another technical.”
That gave me some relief, since I had practiced both technical and behavioral scripts in advance, and I knew I could switch if needed.

The first question was the classic:
“Tell me a little bit about yourself.”
I shared my background: I started college as a math major with the goal of pursuing a PhD, but after joining a hackathon in junior year, I realized I wanted to make an earlier real-world impact. That pushed me to switch into Computer Science. I also addressed the lack of formal internships by explaining that I had to finish two years of coursework in two years, so instead of internships I focused on large-scale personal and team projects.

The interviewer then asked:
“Can you describe a project you led and what challenges you faced?”
I talked about leading a team of 8–10 people to build a scalable e-commerce platform. We used tools like Elasticsearch, Redis, Zookeeper, and RabbitMQ to simulate an industrial-level distributed system.
“Yes, I was the project lead,” I explained. “One of the biggest challenges was keeping everyone motivated. For example, two teammates got stuck because backend data never matched the frontend. They said they were making progress, but in reality, they were falling behind. I set up a one-on-one, listened carefully, and reorganized their priorities so they could get back on track.”

That led naturally into more behavioral questions, such as:

• “How did you motivate your team when things got stuck?”
• “What motivates you personally, and what are your career goals?”
• “What impact do you want to make if you join us?”

For my career goals, I said:
“My immediate goal is to become proficient in the company’s tech stack, and in 3–5 years I want to take on larger scope projects, maybe specializing in AI or other emerging technologies that align with company needs.”

Finally, I got the chance to ask questions. I prepared a few in advance that felt professional but not too generic:

• “What do you like the most about working here?”
• “What’s the onboarding process usually like?”
• “How do you measure scope and performance?”

The conversation wrapped up on a positive note. Even though there had been some confusion at the start, the session ended smoothly.

Looking back, the preparation made the biggest difference. Having structured answers ready for classic behavioral questions allowed me to stay calm even when the format shifted. If you’re preparing for a Visa interview, I’d strongly recommend practicing your answers in a STAR format (Situation, Task, Action, Result) and writing them out in advance. That way, no matter how the questions are phrased, you’ll have a solid story to tell.

Without support, many candidates get bogged down in brute force, miss optimizations, or stumble on edge cases. With CSOAHelp, candidates are trained to extract the hidden structure, explain their reasoning clearly, and present efficient solutions under pressure.

If you’re aiming for Meta or other FAANG-level interviews, don’t prepare alone.

Contact Us:
Email: ceo@csoahelp.com | WeChat: csvohelp