Behavioral Interview. The behavioral job interview is the only type of interview where chemistry plays little part. It is also the only type of interview, except for ones conducted by human resources professionals, where the interviewer has probably had some training in interviewing. Companies that are committed to behavioral interviews usually provide training in this type of interviewing for appropriate employees.
Frequently behavioral interviews are conducted by two people with one asking the questions and the other making notes on your answers and, possible, giving you a numerical score. For companies committed to behavioral interviewing, this is a hurdle you have to get over but it is seldom the only interview.
You are more likely to encounter occasional behavioral questions in standard interviews. Most people have been asked behavioral questions and they frequently revert to ones they remember to use as part of a standard job interview.
The premise behind a behavioral interview is that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. In fact, some research suggests that behavioral interviews predict on-the-job behavior more than 50% of the time while standard interviews are predicative only about 10%.
How do you identify a behavioral question? Behavioral questions usually start with “Tell me about a time when…” or “When was an instance when…”. These questions are designed to get at stories about situations you have actually encountered in the past and discover how you handled those situations. The initial questions are frequently followed by ones which probe more deeply into the situation. Often, behavioral questions are designed to uncover how you reacted in negative situations. In that case, your best tack is to pick a negative situation that actually worked out positively or one in which you are at least able to point out the lessons learned from the situation.
In general, the best answers to behavioral questions are your success stories – the accomplishments you are proud of that you have accumulated from situations you have encountered throughout your career. Look carefully back over your working life and remember the things you are proud of or that other people have complemented you on. Old performance reviews are another good source of remembering these events. Identify the situation. What was the project, the problem, the goal you were given? If you are having trouble coming up with one, you may need to break the situation down into its component parts and handle each one individually.
List the actions you took to complete the project, solve the problem, meet or exceed the goal.
Most importantly, identify the outcome. What were the measurable results you produced? How much under budget or ahead of deadline was the project? What was the dollar value of the project? How many people involved in how many locations? What was the result of the problem being solved? What impact did it have on the bottom line, employee morale or customer satisfaction? How much over goal? Within what period of time? And any thing else you can think of that is measurable. Each of these stories has multiple facets and can be used to answer a variety of behavioral questions. Look at it from the financial aspect, the marketing aspect, the human capital aspect, the research aspect, etc.
With your permission, I’d like to offer you a free report: Job Interview Questions and Answers. You can download it by going to
http://www.acatalystinyoursuccess.com/interview_QA.html
If you would like to hear more about job interviews and the other tools you need to conduct a successful job search visit
http://www.acatalystinyoursuccess.com/Career_Home_Page.html
