It’s becoming increasingly common for companies to perform behavioral interviews on prospective employees, but what exactly is a behavioral interview, and how can you prepare for one?
A behavioral interview basically involves analyzing your behavior in specific situations, based on the belief that your past behavior is a good predictor of your future behavior, and thus the way you performed in the past should give a prospective employer a good idea of how you will perform in the future in a similar situation. Around 30% of corporations in America are now using behavioral interviews, and the numbers are increasing as more and more organizations realize the benefits of using such interview techniques.
The sort of questions you can be expected to answer in a behavioral interview may include:
- “Give an example of the way you handled a stressful situation in a previous job?”
- “Describe an instance where you were required to use your logic and problem solving skills.”
- “Give an example of a goal you reached, and how you attained your goal.”
- “Have you ever gone above and beyond the call of duty? If so, describe the situation.”
- “Describe how you worked effectively in a high pressure situation.”
Also be aware that once you’ve answered the initial question, the interviewer will have follow up questions for you based on how you responded. These questions may be even more probing, asking how you felt, what you said, what was said to you, and so on and so forth.
Preparing for a behavioral interview is quite different to preparing for a traditional interview, but if you’re well prepared and get plenty of practice answering similar questions, it becomes much easier and you feel less put on the spot by the questions than you would otherwise be. However, it can take awhile to prepare because there are so many scenarios and questions you can be asked, and interviewers ask questions many different ways, so the better prepared you are the more confident you’ll feel on the day.
Start by writing down a list of past experiences and how you reacted in each instance. You want to find behavioral examples of leadership, problem solving skills, conflict resolution, teamwork, or dealing with high pressure situations. Think up as many behavioral examples as possible, and list how you dealt with each situation.
Once you’ve created a list, it’s a good idea to flesh out each example a bit more. The more detail you can remember, and the better you can describe the situation and your behavior in the situation, the easier it will be when you’re in a high pressure interview. Ideally by the end of this exercise you’ll have well fleshed out descriptions of at least five to ten experiences you can use in behavioral interviews to describe how you behaved in particular situations. While it’s a good idea for some of these to be from previous work experiences, you can use other examples (especially if you’re new to the world of work and don’t have any previous employment experience to draw from).
The next step is to do some research about the company you’re interviewing for. Look up their website if they have one (the majority of medium to large sized companies have a website these days), talk to current employees of the organization if you know any, and learn as much as you can about the culture of the company. This will help you work out what types of behaviors they’re looking for, and will assist you in tailoring your responses to target their needs.
Also look at the specific job description of the job you’re applying for. Many will have a list of required attributes for prospective employees, which will help you refine your answers further, so you can demonstrate you possess all the job’s requirements.
Find someone to role play with who will be able to give you honest feedback and advice. Try to get a list of as many questions as possible, especially ones you haven’t previously rehearsed. This will test how well you’re able to respond when put in an interview type situation, and will give you a better idea of how you’ll perform in an actual job interview than by providing answers to previously rehearsed questions.
Once you’ve got some solid feedback from this person, you can work on refining your response (it’s really important that when you do role play with someone you find someone who you can trust to give you really honest feedback, even if it’s to say that you really need to work on your answers and interview technique). If there were any questions you really struggled to answer and stumbled over, then take a closer look at them. You may find that the list you established earlier doesn’t cover enough behavioral examples and you need to go back and add to it.
Behavioral interviews, just like traditional interviews, become easier with practice. Do your research and find as many potential questions as possible to answer. The more scenarios you’ve gone over in your mind or in a role play situation, the better prepared you’ll be for the questions when they come in a real interview situation. You may find that although the interviewer may ask questions you haven’t previously come across, because you’ve listed so many detailed behavioral examples in your preparation you have plenty of knowledge and experience to draw from.
