Behavioral Interviewing: a Tool for Hiring Success

You are a busy manager. You’re short-handed in your department; perhaps because an employee is leaving (voluntarily or involuntarily), company is reorganizing and your department is taking on additional responsibilities, or because the departmental workload has grown and you need to add headcount. Due to the lost productivity of having the position empty, the increased stress and workload for the rest of your team while this seat is vacant, and the time it takes to recruit and interview (not to mention the associated costs), it is critical you find the right person for this position. A poor selection will lead to having to go through this process all over again.

How do you find the right person? How do you determine if the person you are interviewing truly has the requisite knowledge, skills and ability to be successful in the role you are interviewing them for? You know what it takes for someone to excel in this position; after all you possess these skills and have demonstrated how to use them to get into the leadership position you're in. Now how do you find out if the handsomely dressed applicant sitting before you is the person you need and can shine in this role?

Past behaviors are the surest measure of future actions. In other words, how a person acted or reacted in a real-life situation in their past will give you a much better idea of how he or she will respond in a similar situation in their future. The Behavioral Interview process will allow you to ask questions of the applicants that will tell you about how they have handled situations in the past similar to ones they may face in the role you are considering them for. Instead of the traditional questions interviewers ask, like; “Tell me about yourself,” or “Why do you want to work for ABC Company?” or the ever-popular, “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” you will instead direct your questions toward situations or problems that he or she may encounter in this position and ask the candidate to respond with how they have handled a similar circumstance in their previous jobs.

Before you develop your Behavioral Interview questions, you need to articulate the “Need to Have” knowledge, skills and abilities for this role. For example, is there a lot of direct customer interaction? What sort of problem-solving skills are required? Will this person be working under deadlines? Maybe there is a matrix structure in the organization and this individual will be reporting to two or more people? Are there are specific tools or programs required to do the job (ie; Auto-CAD for an engineering position, QuickBooks for an Accounting role)? You can also use Behavioral Interviewing questions to help determine team and/or cultural fit. If the role requires a lot of collaboration on projects, someone who can effectively describe their role in the success with a past team they worked in (or even acted in a leadership role in) may very well be a good fit.

Behavioral Interview questions vs. Traditional Interview questions. The purpose of this article is not to say that the traditional interview questions you may be comfortable with are wrong, but instead to arm you with some additional (and perhaps more effective) tools to aid you in candidate selection. “Tell me about yourself,” can be a good ice-breaker and a way to make the candidate more comfortable at the beginning of the interview. Usually the candidate will run through their resume (which you have in front of you) and maybe offer an additional point or two along the way. It is unlikely you will learn much you could not glean from the resume he or she already supplied you with. A Traditional Interview question will often be a yes/no answer where the “correct” answer is obvious (“Do you work well under pressure?” -obvious correct answer is yes). This sort of yes/no questioning will get you what you want to hear, but not necessarily what you need to know.

A Behavioral-based interview question instead focuses on you asking the candidate to “Tell me about a time…” he or she faced a situation or circumstance similar to one they might encounter working with you. For example: “Tell me about a time you had to deal with frequent but unavoidable interruption to you work.” You would be looking for their response to focus on how they stayed on track while addressing the interruptions; which could be workflow checklists, benchmarked time-schedules, delegating less-critical functions or other proactive means of overcoming an obstacle to productivity.

Some sample Behavioral Interview Questions:

Adaptability:

“Tell me about an important project you were working on in which the specifications changed.”

Coaching:

“Tell me about a time when you successfully reinforced the performance of someone who worked for you.”

“Tell me about a time when you worked with someone and their performance failed to improve.”

Culture:

“Tell me about a past job where you felt the environment was conducive to maximum productivity.”

Delegation:

“Tell me about the thought process you use to determine what tasks you can delegate and which tasks you need to do yourself.”

Follow-Up:

“Tell me about a time you failed to follow up on a delegated task and as a result it didn’t get completed. How did you handle it?”

Initiative:

“Tell me about a recent business problem that you identified and resolved.”

Integrity:

“Tell me about a time you were faced with a situation that bordered on being an ethical dilemma. What were the circumstances and how did you address it?”

Leadership:

“Tell me about a time when you had to lead a diverse group.”

Motivation:

“Tell me about your best boss.” “Worst boss.”

Persuasiveness:

“Tell me about a time when you had to shift your approach to get someone on board with an idea or initiative you were pushing.”

Quality of Work:

“Tell me about a time you were not satisfied with the productivity or end results of a team you worked on.”

Risk Taking:

“Tell me about the biggest risk you have undertaken. What were the steps you went through in deciding whether or not to take that risk? What were the obstacles? What was the end result?”

Teamwork:

“Tell me about the best team you were ever a part of.”

Asking candidates Behavioral based questions will ideally give you a more complete picture of the candidate’s background. While traditional “Yes or No” questions can give you some necessary information, ask yourself if you can rewrite your question to make it an open-ended behavioral based interview question.