How to Conduct Effective Behavioural Interviews

Behavioral interviewing is one of the most effective ways to interview. However, when hiring an employee for your small business, you’ll need to understand the basics of behavioral interviewing first before getting the most out of this recruiting tool.

What Is It and Why Use It?

A behavioral interview involves an interviewer asking questions that are designed to surface patterns of behavior. Behavioral interviewing questions inquire about true past behavior, actions and experiences, and will give you insight into how a person may perform in the future.

Prior to interviewing a candidate, it’s important to review the job description to find what kind of competencies and skills are required for the position. Based on those needs, you can create behavioral-based interview questions.

How to Create Behavioral Interview Questions

Behavioral based interview questions ask for specific examples of a candidate’s past experience. Behavioral interview questions can be framed using the following phrases:

  • “Tell me about a time when you…”
  • “When have you ever been…”
  • “How have you used [skill] to be successful in the past?”

Wondering how these question frames work in action? Here are few samples to get you started:

Teamwork

Tell me about a time when you were working as part of a team and one person wasn’t “pulling their weight”. What did you do?

Initiative

Describe a time when you did something that you were not expected to do. What did you do? How did you do it? How did your employer react?

Communication and Customer Service

Give me a specific example of a time when you had to address an angry customer. What was the problem and what was the outcome?

Goal Setting

Describe a time when you set a challenging goal for yourself. How did you set the goal and what were the results?

Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

Describe a time when you anticipated potential problems and developed preventative measures.

What Is the Interviewer’s Role?

While the candidate is answering your questions your job as the interviewer is to be an active listener who is looking for the following key behaviors:

  • Intelligent responses to given situations
  • Good or poor reactions
  • Self-motivation and self-direction
  • Problem-solving ability or problem-making ability
  • Positive, pro-active, or can-do attitude

Don’t be afraid to dig deeper during the interview. In fact, if a candidate’s answer seems generic you should ask follow-up questions to clarify the response.

Also, be sure to shy away from asking situational questions that are framed hypothetically (such as “How would you deal with…”).  The answer that results from a hypothetical question will not prove anything about past experience or behavior, and may lead the candidate to simply fabricate an answer based on what they think you want to hear.

How Do You Evaluate the Answers?

The best way for a candidate to answer these kinds of questions is using the S.T.A.R. format (Situation/Task, Action, and Result.). You’ll be able to tell if a candidate is aware or has prepared for their interview if they can answer using this format.

If a candidate doesn’t answer a question clearly, you can guide them through responding in the S.T.A.R format. For instance, you may ask, “What was the situation?”, then “How did you deal with that?”, and finally, “What was the end result?”.  As you drill down on these points, you’ll better understand the candidate’s experience.

By actively looking for S.T.A.R answers as you go, you’ll be better able to draw out the responses you need to determine the candidate’s suitability for the job. And in the end, a behavioral interview can be the difference between hiring an employee based on what they say they might do, or hiring an employee based on his of her real life experience and behavior.