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Companies have increasingly adopted behavioral
interviewing techniques as a key technique in screening candidates. What
is a behavioral interview? Basically, it's an interview designed to
elicit information that will tell the interviewer how you will perform
on the job. The principle behind the technique is the belief that the
best indicator of future behavior is past behavior. The technique
involves asking a series of questions designed to get the candidate to
talk about how he or she handled certain situations in the past. For
example, if a company has a high-stress environment, the interviewer
might ask a candidate to talk about whether she has ever been in a
stressful situation in the past. If she says yes, the interviewer would
proceed with a line of questions about what she had done in the
situation, how it made her feel, how others had responded to her
actions, how she relieved the stress of the situation, and so on.
Typically, the interviewer will have determined three
or four behavioral characteristics that would be most important for
on-the-job success and will have written out a definition of each such
characteristic. Examples:
- Good listening: The ability to listen empathetically to a
client's problems, asking appropriate questions and paraphrasing the
responses.
- Written communication: The ability to capture, in a
succinct manner, the most important issues to be resolved, the
recommended action plan, and the desired outcomes.
- Project management: Taking responsibility for organizing
tasks, reaching agreement on individual responsibilities and goals,
monitoring progress, resolving problems, and reporting on status.
In a behavioral interview, you will be provided with
such definitions of desirable characteristics and asked for examples of
situations in which you have exhibited those characteristics. Sometimes,
after you have provided one example, you will be asked for another, just
to test the depth of your experience.
One of the supposed benefits of this technique for
employers is that candidates cannot prepare for these questions in
advance. However, you can help yourself by anticipating the types of
questions you might receive and dredging your memory for examples of
past behavior. You may be able to guess at some of the questions by
analyzing the job requirements beforehand. Behavioral interviewing is a
challenge, but preparation will help. You may feel that you didn't have
perfect answers to each question, yet still be seen as much better
suited than the other candidates who didn't anticipate behavioral
questions. As one swimmer said to the other upon the sighting a shark:
"Fortunately, I don't have to swim faster than the shark. I only have to
swim faster than you." |
