Behavioral Interviews
As an interviewer, you may choose to ask standard theoretical questions, such as “Tell me about yourself” or “What’s your biggest weakness?” (Note to candidates: “My weakness is working too hard!” won’t win you any points for originality.)
In contrast to such standard questions, employers are increasingly using so-called behavioral interviews, which force candidates to give concrete examples of how they reacted to specific situations in the past. These answers ideally offer the interviewers an insight into how the candidates might behave in the future.
Examples of behavioral interview questions are: “Describe a conflict you had with a colleague and how you resolved it” or “Tell me about a specific ethical dilemma you faced and how you overcame it” or “Explain how you dealt with a situation that was very risky” or “What was the hardest presentation you ever had to make and how did you get through it?”
For the interviewer, the trick with behavioral interviews is identifying in advance which behaviors are most necessary for the particular job opening (e.g. “the candidate knows how to avoid conflict and play well with others” or “the candidate is aggressive about achieving goals and is unafraid of ruffling some feathers”). After identifying the behaviors, interviewers should try to formulate probing questions (be creative!) that force the candidates to reveal how they would behave in a particular situation and whether they are therefore a good match for the position.
Ideally, the candidate will describe a specific situation that addresses the question, explain how he or she dealt with the situation, and demonstrate how the actions resulted in a favorable outcome.
With pre-recorded interviews, a candidate can, of course, prepare (or even invent) stories that tell you as the interviewer what you want to hear – or so they think. But in reality, they won’t know what the “right” answer is because they won’t know which behaviors you value most for the job.
When interviewing younger candidates, encourage them to answer behavioral questions based on not just job experience (of which they may have had very little), but also experiences from college, school, or other aspects of life – e.g. “Tell me about a particularly stressful situation you faced with your roommates or family members, and walk me through how you got through it.”
The assumption behind behavioral interviews is that how one has behaved in the past is a pretty fair measure of how one is likely act in the future, and that we all tend to revert to those in-grained behaviors.
In other words, according to fans of behavioral interviews, we are who we are (more or less), and we can’t jump over our own shadows!