Behavioral Interview

Organizations should carefully choose the most suitable candidate for their open job. That is because hiring an unsuitable person will cause unnecessary costs. To prevent such a possibility as much as possible, companies use many different recruitment methods and techniques. One is the behavioral interview, which helps gauge candidates accurately and fast.

What Is a Behavioral Interview?

Behavioral interviewing, or competency-based interviewing, gathers information about candidates' behaviors to comprehend their habits, attitudes, emotions, and thoughts. Although psychology and therapy often utilize this behavioral interviewing technique, it is also used in career counseling, where understanding and analyzing human behavior is significant.

Therefore, that is also included in the recruitment process (recruiters generally ask applicants what their past behaviors were in particular situations). This behavioral interview technique is used to evaluate whether candidates have the skills and qualities required for the job since it is widely believed that past behavior is the strongest predictor of future performance.

A behavioral interview is a communication between candidates and recruiters similar to a standard interview. The reason for this is that representatives of the companies want to understand the candidates' soft and hard skills, as well as which kind of behaviors are typical of them. For this purpose, they ask open-ended questions, such as generally beginning with "Describe a situation...", which encourages candidates to give particular examples:

✅ The task or situation's description.

✅ The completed actions' description (and the reasons behind them).

✅ The outcomes were attained, and how were they assessed.

Behavioral vs. Traditional Interview

Even though the two are similar, they have some differences, as mentioned above. When the main focus of behavioral interview questions is the past experiences of candidates, traditional interview questions aim to obtain general background information. For instance, in the traditional interviews, questions like "Why do you want this job?", "What are your strengths?" or open-ended ones such as "Describe your ideal job" can be asked of interviewees.

Although traditional interviewing is perfectly acceptable, it may be more subjective than behavioral interviewing. When answering behavioral interview questions, interviewees must reflect on their past experiences and provide particular examples of handling challenging circumstances. On the other hand, while answering traditional interview questions, they have greater leeway to showcase themselves creatively.

Why Is Behavioral Interviewing Important?

Behavioral interviewing is significant since organizations can assess candidates in different aspects, such as critical thinking, interpersonal, and problem-solving skills, thanks to behavioral interview questions and answers.

With the help of real-life examples provided by interviewees, employers can gauge what types of behaviors candidates have in the past. That can be a predictor of how candidates will act in comparable circumstances in the future. Also, it is possible to say that conducting effective behavioral interviews contributes to the company's talent acquisition.

What Are the Benefits of Behavioral Interviewing?

Behavioral interviews are significant in the scope of interviewing, which is a subject that has an important place in the human resources field. Naturally, many employers and HR professionals who aim for success for their companies ask, "Is behavioral interviewing effective?". In response to this question, here are some benefits of behavioral interviewing:

Helping to Predict the Future Behavior of Candidates

The primary benefit of conducting behavioral interviews is that these interviews are considered reliable predictors of the future behavior of candidates for organizations. Understanding candidates' behaviors and thoughts in former situations helps companies comprehend what motivates them and their perspective on life. Providing them with questions about their behavior in particular workplace scenarios also increases the likelihood that employers will identify how accurately they will perform similar tasks.

Encouraging Interviewees to Explain Quite Specifically

During a traditional interview, interviewees give a general description to the interviewers in terms of their experience and skills. Nevertheless, behavioral-based interviewing requires candidates to describe specific details about former situations.

In this way, companies can identify how talented candidates are in particular scenarios because it is better to describe how they accomplished things rather than just asserting their ability to do so. For example, if the candidate applying for a sales specialist job says they have a strong persuasive ability, the most effective way to confirm this is to ask them to describe a situation where they demonstrated their abilities.

An excellent way to encourage candidates to elaborate on specific experiences is to use the situation, task, action, and result (STAR) interview method. That includes requesting the candidate to:

• Situation: Describe a particular situation they encountered at work.
• Task: Explain what kind of task they have in that particular circumstance.
• Action: Give an account of what type of actions they took.
• Result: Demonstrate the results of their actions.

Minimizing Bias during the Interview Process

Focusing on interviewees' particular behaviors rather than their experience and skills helps avoid bias and subjectivity of interviewers. When evaluating interviewees' responses and outcomes in specific situations in their work environments, interviewers are less likely to be biased because of some personal characteristics such as age, gender, and ethnicity. Instead, they can focus on how they would perform in similar situations. It is also helpful in minimizing incorrect perspectives of candidates based on their skills and experience.

How to Conduct a Behavioral Interview?

There are some steps that employers and HR experts should follow during behavioral interviews to choose the most suitable candidate for the job position announced by their companies. Here are the steps for conducting behavioral interviews:

Determining Job Requirements

Firstly, the main competencies and skills required for the open position must be determined. That will help identify which behaviors will be assessed.

Prepare Appropriate Questions

It is essential for experts who aim for a properly conducted interview to prepare appropriate questions for candidates. To evaluate candidates’ past behaviors and performance, they can use open-ended questions examples, such as “Can you tell me about a situation in your previous work experience where you led a team project?".

Besides, asking only generic questions for a job interview is not enough. Also, questions appropriate for the sector are significant for these interviews that aim to identify candidates with the right competencies. These questions should focus on what is critical in the sector and analyze the candidates' experiences in detail.

Using the STAR Method

It is possible to benefit from the STAR Method mentioned in the title "What Are the Benefits of Behavioral Interviewing?" to help candidates explain the task or situation in detail. With this approach, the necessary concrete answers will be obtained, and the evaluation process in HR will be facilitated.

Listening Carefully

Interviewers listening carefully to interviewees and asking detailed questions where necessary are important for successful behavioral interviews. In this way, organizations can determine whether candidates and their competencies are suitable for the position.

Taking Detailed Notes

It is a fact that not everyone is in the habit of taking notes. On the other hand, interviewers must take detailed notes to evaluate the candidates' answers objectively and correctly. This way, candidates can be measured as accurately as possible.

Evaluating Correctly

Organizations should evaluate interviewers’ answers based on their identified skills and competencies and compare using a scoring system.

What Are the Most Common Behavioral Interview Questions?

In behavioral interviews, the skills required for the open position are determined, and then questions are developed to determine if the candidates have these skills. The significant point here is to ask how the candidates behaved instead of asking how they would act in a certain situation. In other words, it is crucial to prepare the questions according to real-life examples and to get answers from the candidates according to their real-life experiences.

When researching “traditional interview vs behavioral interview”, it is seen that behavioral interviewing questions are more specific, deep, and to the point, unlike traditional interviews. Here are some common behavioral interview questions:

Please...

• Tell me about a time when you worked well under pressure.
• Give me an instance where you and a team member disagreed. What was your approach to it?
• Give me an example of a goal you have accomplished and explain how.
• Tell me about an instance when you erred at work. What did you learn from your error, and how did you remedy the problem?
• Give an example of a career objective you formerly had. What actions did you take to make that happen?
• Describe a situation in which you had to make a tough choice. What was your strategy?

Conclusion

In this content, you have learned many significant topics, such as behavioral interview meaning, behavioral interview benefits, and conducting behavioral interviews. As an HR professional or employer wanting to develop their knowledge on behavioral interviewing or only someone interested in human resources, you can utilize this content as a comprehensive guide.

Although behavioral interviews are critical among HR topics, there are many subjects you should discover to your career development. You can visit Hirex to develop yourself and your company with new issues!