Expedia Behavioural Interview: Competencies & Answers

What Expedia's behavioural interview is actually testing

Like most large travel and tech companies, Expedia uses behavioural (competency-based) interviewing at various stages of its hiring process — often alongside a recorded video screen or a panel with the hiring manager. The premise is simple: past behaviour is the best predictor of future performance, so instead of asking hypotheticals, interviewers ask you to describe real situations from your own work history.

Expedia Group publishes its company values on its careers site, and these tend to shape the themes interviewers probe for — things like putting the customer first, taking ownership, moving quickly on decisions, working well across teams, and using data to guide choices. Exact wording of values and question banks can change, so treat any specific 'inside information' you find online with caution and focus instead on preparing strong, honest examples that map to these well-established themes.

Core competencies you're likely to be asked about

You won't know the exact question wording in advance, but you can reliably prepare for the underlying competencies. Across most large, customer-facing tech and travel businesses — Expedia included — these are the ones that come up again and again.

• Customer focus — how you've identified and acted on a customer or user need, even under pressure
• Ownership and bias for action — taking initiative without waiting to be told, and following through
• Collaboration across teams — working with people who have different priorities, functions or seniority
• Data-informed decision making — using evidence or metrics to choose between options
• Adaptability — handling ambiguity, changing priorities, or a fast-moving project
• Problem-solving under constraint — delivering a result despite limited time, budget or information
• Conflict or disagreement — how you've handled a difference of opinion professionally

Use STAR to structure every answer

STAR is the standard framework for behavioural answers because it forces you to be concrete rather than descriptive. Interviewers are trained to listen for each part, and answers that skip straight to 'what I learned' without ever explaining the actual situation tend to score poorly.

Situation: set the scene in one or two sentences — what was the context, who was involved. Task: what were you specifically responsible for or trying to achieve. Action: what did you actually do, step by step — this should be the longest part of your answer and should use 'I', not 'we'. Result: what happened, ideally with a number, outcome or piece of feedback, plus a brief reflection if relevant.

Example answer: customer focus

Question style: 'Tell me about a time you went out of your way to solve a problem for a customer.'

Situation: 'In my previous role as a support team lead, we had a recurring complaint about refund delays during a system migration.' Task: 'I was asked to stop the complaints escalating further while the technical fix was still weeks away.' Action: 'I mapped where in the process refunds were actually stalling, negotiated a manual override with finance for the worst-affected cases, and set up a proactive email so customers knew their refund was in progress rather than finding out via a complaint.' Result: 'Complaint volume on refunds dropped by roughly a third within two weeks, and finance later adopted the manual override as a temporary standard process until the system was fixed.'

Notice this answer is specific: it names a real mechanism (the manual override), a real communication fix (the proactive email), and a measurable result — not just 'I made sure the customer was happy'.

Example answer: ownership and moving fast

Question style: 'Describe a time you made a decision quickly with incomplete information.'

Situation: 'Midway through a product launch, our main third-party data feed went down with no clear timeline for a fix.' Task: 'I needed to decide whether to delay the launch or find a workaround, and I had about two hours to make the call.' Action: 'I pulled together the two engineers who knew the feed best, agreed a temporary manual data source as a stopgap, and flagged the risk and my decision to my manager and the launch stakeholders in writing so everyone had visibility.' Result: 'We launched on schedule with the workaround, the permanent feed was restored within a day, and my manager specifically cited the decision as an example of good judgement under pressure in my next review.'

Common mistakes to avoid

Most candidates don't lose marks on competence — they lose marks on how they present it. Watch for these patterns.

• Don't: speak in 'we' throughout — the interviewer needs to know what you did
• Do: use 'I' for your specific contribution, even within a team story
• Don't: pick an example so old or vague you can't remember real details
• Do: prepare 5-6 solid stories in advance that can flex across multiple competencies
• Don't: ramble through the situation and rush the result
• Do: practise timing so Action and Result together take up over half the answer
• Don't: choose an example where the outcome was purely negative with no learning
• Do: include a brief, honest reflection if the result was mixed

How to prepare without over-scripting

The best behavioural answers sound rehearsed in structure but natural in delivery. That balance is hard to judge on your own — most people either read from notes or ramble, and it's difficult to hear which one you're doing until you play it back.

A practical approach: write one-line STAR bullet points for 5-6 stories that cover the competencies above, then practise saying them aloud against a timer, ideally on camera. ScreenReady simulates the timed, one-way video format that many large employers use for first-round screens, and gives you structured feedback on pacing, clarity and specificity — useful for catching the habits (rambling, dropping the Result, over-using 'we') that are hard to spot in the moment but obvious to an interviewer.