1. Who set the goal?
If someone handed you a defined problem with a plan attached and you ran it well, that reads as solid mid-level work no matter how big the project was. Owning the solution to a given problem reads senior. Defining the problem itself, then earning buy-in for your approach, reads a level above that. And the principal-level stories almost always start the same way: nobody assigned the problem. The candidate spotted it, made the case, and drove it. In my experience most people describe their scope about one rung above where this test actually places them.
2. How many teams did it credibly span?
Excellent single-team work still caps a story. The senior gate is influence beyond your own team, without authority. Another team changed what they were doing because of you, and you can name who, what changed, and how you got them there. When I asked "who else had to change course because of this?" and the honest answer was nobody, the story read at team scope. At a senior loop that's a down-level signal.
3. What were the stakes of the conflict?
Every real story has a disagreement in it somewhere. Inside-the-team disagreements are mid-level texture. Conflicts across teams read senior, especially when the other side had something real to lose. Holding a position against your own leadership, on a call that mattered, is principal territory. If your story has no conflict in it at all, expect the interviewer to go looking for one.
4. Does your claimed role survive follow-ups?
This one re-levels the most stories. You say "I led the migration." The interviewer asks what you specifically decided, what the hardest call was, who pushed back. If the "I" quietly turns into "we" under those questions, or the outcome loses its denominator ("significantly improved" with no number), the story gets re-read at the scope you personally owned. That smaller scope is what gets leveled. Nothing personal; it's the mechanism working.
What to do with this
Take your two or three best stories and run these tests against them honestly. Rehearse the version where your part is specific and the result has a number. Then practice saying it out loud against follow-ups, because that's where prepared stories fall apart.