In this article
Before you start
This page is one part of the behavioral interview guide; the sibling page on behavioral questions about communication lists more prompts.
Why interviewers ask this
Engineers who explain badly cost their teams real work, so interviewers listen to how the story is told as much as to what it contains. A preprint multivocal review (Rabelo et al., 2026, not yet peer reviewed) reports that lost information led to incorrectly implemented features and to bugs that took long to identify. It also describes cases where unresolved doubts sent a team months in the wrong direction.
The same review notes that programming is easy to test with a code challenge, while communication is more subjective, so some organizations infer it from situational questions. Your answer is therefore the sample. A weak answer claims "I am a good communicator." A strong answer shows one situation and what you said, wrote or asked. The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) tells candidates to share examples of when they used a skill, and NACE reports that employers use behavior-based questions to find them.
The communication question from first principles
- Answer budget
- An answer budget is a plan for how many seconds and spoken words each part of an answer may use before you start speaking, so that the part that proves the skill gets the most room and the background gets the least.
In plain words
Think of your answer as a short bug report about a real moment. A good bug report says where you were, what you had to do, what you did and what happened. Nobody wants the history of the codebase first. The analogy breaks in one place: a bug report is written and can be reread, while your answer is spoken once, so it must be shorter and clearer.
In one precise sentence, the question asks you to show one facet of communication in a real engineering moment, using your own actions as the evidence.
What counts as communication for an engineer? The review lists oral communication (meetings, presentations), written communication (documentation, emails, tickets), active listening, communication in English or another foreign language, and giving and receiving constructive feedback such as code review (Rabelo et al., 2026). Active listening is hearing what the other person means and checking that you understood it before you reply. Name the facet your story shows.
Step 1: Pick one story and set the scene briefly
Pick a real story in which communication changed an engineering outcome, and name the facet it shows. Situation and Task together take about 20% of the answer, about 10% each, according to the University College Dublin (UCD) Professional Academy (accessed 2026-10-26). Input: your story bank. Output: two or three sentences of context.
The same page advises preparing 5 core accomplishments mapped across leadership, conflict, failure, innovation and communication. If each of five stories carries two of those tags, there are ten tags, so every competency has two candidate stories.1 State the team, the stake and your job, then stop. An illustrative scene: "Two teams read the same ticket differently, and I owned the integration." You now have a scene short enough to leave room for the Action.
Step 2: Spend most of the time on the Action
Action takes about 70% of the answer, because it is the part that shows what you actually said, wrote or asked (UCD Professional Academy). Use verbs that show communication: you asked a clarifying question, wrote a one-page summary, repeated back what you heard, or phrased a review comment as a suggestion. Say "I" for your own steps; the page says interviewers need to see your own contribution, so keep "we" for the team's outcome.
A strong answer lasts 1.5 to 2 minutes, about 200 to 250 spoken words, with 60 to 75 seconds of Action, according to the same page. At the midpoint of 225 spoken words, Action gets 157.5 words and each other part gets 22.5 words.1 The page names over-long background as the most frequent mistake. You now know where the time goes; the last step is how to end.
Text description of the diagram
- At 225 spoken words, the Action gets 157.5 words and each other part gets 22.5 words.
- Action takes about 70% of the answer.
Step 3: Close with a measured Result
Result takes about 10% of the answer, and the page gives 15 to 30 seconds for Result and takeaway (UCD Professional Academy). State what changed, with a number you can defend, then one sentence on what you do differently now. In the example below the Result is a count and an observable fact (one round of rework instead of three; the first test run passed). If you do have a number, an illustrative cut in review turnaround from five days to two would be a 60% cut.1
If you have no number, use an observable fact, such as the reviewer approving without further comments. Use only your own figures: sample answers you read elsewhere may use invented numbers, and the numbers here are labeled illustrative for the same reason. After the Result, stop talking. The questions you ask at the end are the next sample of how you communicate.
Step-by-step description
- One story, then Situation and Task in about 20% of the time.
- Action takes about 70% of the answer.
- Result takes about 10% of the answer.
- Situation and Task together take about 20% of the answer.
- Action takes about 70% of the answer.
- Result takes about 10% of the answer.
Knowing it is half the job. Saying it is the other half.
Interview Clozo is an AI interview copilot for real interview rounds: it hears the question and puts a strong answer on your screen, and you say it in your own words. See the features or how it works.
Start Free Trial →The Staff-level answer
The story below is an illustrative composite, not a real person's account; replace every detail with your own.
Tell me about a time your communication changed the outcome of an engineering project.
Two teams read the same ticket differently, and I owned the integration. A mismatch would have meant a week of rework. I did three things. First, I asked each lead to say in one sentence what they expected the endpoint to return, and I wrote both sentences side by side in the ticket. Second, I saw the gap was about error handling, so I drafted a one-page summary with two example responses and asked both leads to reply with edits.
Third, I booked a ten-minute call only for the one point they still disagreed on, and I listened first and repeated back their constraint before I proposed a fix. We shipped with one round of rework instead of three, and the integration passed its first test run. Now I write expected output into every ticket.
What makes it Staff-level: it names a concrete stake, uses both written and spoken channels, shows listening before proposing, and ends on a measured result and a changed habit. The spoken structure is two sentences of scene, three labeled actions, one result with a number and one changed habit.
The answer runs 135 words, about 63 seconds at the pace implied by the university page's 200 to 250 words in 90 to 120 seconds.1 That fits a 60 to 90 second clip, which holds about 129 to 193 words at that pace.1 A live answer can grow toward the page's 90 to 120 seconds by adding detail to the Action.
The rubric
| Dimension | Weak answer | Strong answer | Staff answer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clarity | Claims the skill with no story | One named situation told in order | Same, and states what the listener needed to decide |
| Your contribution | Says "we" throughout | Says what I asked, wrote or decided | Separates own steps from the team's and owns a misstep |
| Listening | Talks only about what you said | Mentions asking and repeating back | Shows the other side's constraint changing your plan |
| Result | "It went well" | One number or observable outcome | Result plus the habit you changed afterwards |
| Pace | Long background, rushed Action | Short scene, Action takes most of the time | Fits the time and stops after the Result |
The rows follow the review's suggested criteria of clarity and listening (Rabelo et al., 2026), plus the time and ownership advice of the university page.
Three variants of this question
Tell me about a time you explained a technical idea to someone non-technical.
The facet is oral explanation. The Situation names who needed to decide something, the Action shows you replaced jargon with one concrete example and asked them to say it back, and the Result is the decision they made.
Tell me about a time you gave or received difficult feedback in a code review.
The facet is feedback, which the review lists together with code review and retrospectives. Show that you commented on the change and not the person, gave a reason, and checked how the comment landed; the Result is the merged change or the habit that followed.
How would you handle a teammate who stops replying to messages?
A teammate who stops replying is a situational question, and the university page says STAR can structure it by outlining the steps of a hypothetical resolution. Say what you would ask first, which channel you would switch to, when you would involve the lead and what you would write down afterwards. More prompts of this kind are in behavioral questions about communication.
Common mistakes
- "I'm a good communicator; I get along with everyone." (wrong) It is a claim with no evidence. (right) "Here is one situation: two teams read the same ticket differently, and I owned the integration."
- Opening with a long history of the project. (wrong) The university page names over-long background as the most frequent mistake. (right) Two sentences of scene, then the Action.
- "We decided to write a summary." (wrong) The interviewer cannot see your part. (right) "I drafted the summary and asked both leads for edits."
- "I speak up a lot in meetings." (wrong) Communication here means explaining, listening, writing and feedback, not talkativeness. (right) Name the facet and show the behavior, such as repeating back a constraint before proposing a fix.
- Ending with "so it worked out." (wrong) No evidence of change. (right) One number or observable outcome, then one changed habit.
Follow-up questions
What is a synonym for communication skills?
Common stand-ins are "interpersonal skills" or "written and verbal skills", but in an interview a named facet works better than a synonym. The review lists oral communication, written communication, active listening, foreign-language communication and giving and receiving feedback, so "I write clear tickets and listen before I propose" says more than a reworded label. For the personal-style version of the question, see how to describe interpersonal communication.
How long should my answer to a communication question be?
The university page recommends 90 seconds to 2 minutes, about 200 to 250 spoken words. A 60 to 90 second clip holds about 129 to 193 words at the pace implied by those figures, so cut the scene first and keep the Action.1
How many stories should I prepare?
The same page advises 5 core accomplishments mapped across leadership, conflict, failure, innovation and communication. One well-tagged story can then serve prompts such as common interview questions and why should we hire you.
Do engineering employers care about written communication?
The review counts documentation, emails and tickets as part of engineering communication. In NACE's Job Outlook 2025 survey, written communication was important to at least 70% of responding employers and more than two-thirds sought verbal communication, though that survey covers college-student resumes, not engineers specifically.
Is communication really the top skill employers want from engineers?
The evidence supports "near the top", not a single winner. The review reports that Florea and Stray found communication the most cited skill category in tester job ads worldwide, and that Matturro placed oral communication among the five most relevant skills in technology job postings in Uruguay; it also notes that claims of a top skill often rest on anecdotes. NACE's Job Outlook surveys consistently show employers seeking critical thinking, communication and teamwork, and 70% of employers report using skills-based hiring, up from 65% the year before.
What if I have no work story to tell?
Use a real project, study team or open-source discussion where you explained, listened or gave feedback, and keep the same structure. Specific and true beats impressive and vague; the general method is in how to answer interview questions.
- The question asks for one real story that shows a named facet of communication, not a claim.
- Tell it in STAR form: scene about 20%, Action about 70%, Result about 10%.
- Say "I" for your own steps and end with a number or an observable result.
- Prepare a story bank of five stories, each tagged with the skills it shows.
- Rehearse to the clock: about 225 words fits 90 to 120 seconds, and the Action gets most of them.
Sources
- STAR Interview Technique (Situation, Task, Action, Result) — UCD Professional Academy, University College Dublin (accessed 2026-10-26), 10 Aug 2026
- Communication Skills in Software Engineering: A Multivocal Review (arXiv 2606.10320, preprint) — arXiv (Rabelo et al.; accessed 2026-10-26), 10 Jun 2026
- What Students Need to Know About the Skills-Based Hiring Process — NACE (page dated February 24, 2026; Job Outlook 2026 survey), 24 Feb 2026
- How New Grad Job Seekers Can Stand Out With Potential Employers — NACE (2026 press page, undated; accessed 2026-10-26), 26 Oct 2026
- What Are Employers Looking for When Reviewing College Students' Resumes? (Job Outlook 2025) — NACE (Job Outlook 2025 survey, undated page; accessed 2026-10-26), 26 Oct 2026
