The purpose of behavioral interviewing is:
- To evaluate past performance to predict future performance
- The more recent the experience, the more reliable it is.
- Will require specific examples of situations and experiences
- To ask questions about skills that relate to job functions and performance expectations
Trait vs. Behavioral Interviewing
| Trait | Behavioral |
| I am reliable | I have only missed one day of work in the last two years |
| I am good with people | Last week I settled a disagreement between two team members. We were having difficulty with... |
| I am a leader | I was elected president of my fraternity for my leadership and communication skills, which I used to... |
Using the STAR Response
It is imperative that you answer the questions. A behavioral interview question focuses on a time when\'85 or a specific situation where... It requires a specific response, not how you generally have done something. Use the STAR method to construct your response.
- Situation, set up the situation without unrelated information to cloud the response
- Task or role that you performed
- Action, telling what you did, why was it appropriate
- Results tell how you made a difference: did you save money? Was the customer satisfied? Did you make it more efficient? What did you learn? Results are qualitative or quantitative.
Be Prepared To:
- Describe a difficult problem you solved: How did you identify the problem? What were the pros and cons? How did you solve it? (Describes problem solving)
- Describe a time when you had to motivate another person: What did you do? How did you do it? (Demonstrates leadership)
- Describe a time when you decided on your own to accomplish a task: What did it require? How did you accomplish it? (Demonstrates initiative)
- Describe a time you made a bad decision or you wished you had acted differently with a customer. (Demonstrate the results, what you learned and how you did it differently in the future)
Behavioral Interview Questions
- Tell me about yourself
- Needs an opening, body and closing
- Open with appreciation and interest in being there and a brief background on your education/experience as they relate to the position
- Provide specific examples of skills and the results of using them to make a difference
- Tell me about a difficult decision you made?
- Looking for process, what you considered when making the decision
- Alternatives? Timeline/deadlines, quality, budget/monetary issues?
- Tell me about a time when you had to go above and beyond the call of duty
- Looking for willingness to do more than the minimum, initiative and energy
- Tells the interviewer what you consider to be more than is expected
- What did you do in a team project that contributed to the teamwork environment?
- How do you make a difference? Management style, leadership
- What are your main contributions to the project? To the team?
- Tells about your interaction with others
- What did you do in your last job to be more effective with your organization and planning?
- Looking at how you organize, plan, prioritize
- Do you consider resources and timelines/deadlines, budget, work quality
- Were others considered?
- What class did you like least and why?
- Maturity is responsibility for one\rquote s actions, the good and the bad, not blaming others
- What did you do to make the class work for your goals, expectations?
- Tell me about a time when you had to bend the rules?
- Demonstrates flexibility, continuous improvement
- Did you use good judgment?
- Tell me about a time when you missed a deadline on an important project.
- What were the causes and what did you do?
- Take responsibility for your actions.
- What did you learn from it and how would you prevent it from happening again?
- What would your references say about you?
- Talk to your references and know what they and your co-workers would say about you