I just had a first-round interview, and the questions were a bit unusual

Oh, if you get three follow-up questions on a failure story, that really messes with your head lol. You did well.

Backend interviews are really like that these days. More teams screen technical skills through resumes/take-home assignments and focus the interview on personality + problem-solving. In particular, they keep asking these two things: 'What was your judgment back then?' and 'What would you change if you did it again?' Organize your answers with STAR, but the conclusion needs to go beyond 'what I learned' and include 'so how did your behavior change afterward' or it falls flat. Once you're at the 3-year mark, you're in the stage where they look at the basis for your judgment rather than execution ability, so preparing failure stories is actually the key.

Well, that's a bit... If you memorize a failure story using STAR, there's a good chance you'll get grilled just the same in follow-up questions. Rather than the format, isn't it more important to first sort out what you actually felt at the time?

Got a source? lol Or is it just a feeling?

I got grilled similarly last year, and I think what the interviewer wanted wasn't a perfect retrospective but an attitude of acknowledging failure. When I honestly said the problem was that I'd done all the project schedule estimation by myself, the follow-up questions became much easier after that. The results are next week, so don't be too hard on yourself.

Agreed — if you don’t prepare a failure story, you’ll really trip over your words.

If you're in your third year, isn't that kind of thing basic? What company did you apply to that you felt it was odd they were selling failure stories? These days, it's actually weirder for a place to sell only tech.

If I could give you one pro tip: pick about three failed projects in advance and practice talking about each for five minutes using the five-step framework 'situation – my judgment – result – alternative – later application.' In particular, for the alternative step, you need to include a real example of 'here's what I did next' so it doesn't sound hollow. And when you start stumbling over your words, using 'May I pause to organize my thoughts and start again?' won't cost you as many points as you'd think.

From the interviewer's perspective, the reason they ask that kind of question is simple. They've already seen all your qualifications on paper, so now they just want to see how you handle screw-ups when working together. Don't get too discouraged—hope you get good news next week.