What can you expect during a behavioral interview? How to effectively prepare for it? What sample questions can you expect? How to answer in a credible way? Is it reasonable to talk about mistakes and failures?
A recruitment interview is an extremely important part of the recruitment process, and a particularly important element of it is the behavioral interview, which employers are increasingly using during recruitment interviews.
The basis of this type of selection is based on the candidates’ experiences, in particular on their behaviors in business situations and beyond.
Below you will find a few tips that we hope will help you prepare for this type of interview.
1. Analyze your CV
The first step you should take is to analyze your CV in terms of potential questions that the interviewer may ask. Try to put yourself in the interviewer’s shoes, what would you ask the candidate if you read their experience and skills. Match these questions to the offer you are interested in. Try to arrange these questions on a piece of paper and answer them in as much detail as possible.
2. What is a Behavioral Interview?
Testing personality or intelligence is a complicated process and requires appropriate education. For the purposes of candidate selection, behavioral psychology has developed a simpler method, which is based on the assumption that human behaviors tend to repeat themselves. Hence, tools for measuring effective and ineffective behaviors have emerged. The key is to determine which behaviors in which company are effective behaviors. This is what job position profiling is for. On this basis, a list of competencies is created and, to put it simply, we can say that behavioral questions are prepared for each competency. If an important competency in a managerial position is team management in a changing environment, perhaps an appropriate question that the selector will ask will be: “Please describe a situation in which you motivated the team to accept difficult change.”
3. Use the database of sample behavioral questions
The Internet is the perfect place to find potential questions that a interviewr may ask you, analyze them and consider whether any of them may be asked during a recruitment interview? Below are some examples of competencies and questions that may appear to examine them:
• Creativity in B2B sales.
“Tell me about a situation in sales to business clients in which you had to use creative thinking.”
• Intrinsic motivation.
“Describe a situation in which you had to perform tasks that you did not feel like doing.”
• Investment project management.
“Tell me about a difficult project to change the infrastructure of production buildings.”
Note that the examples of the above questions are called ‘General Questions.’ The interviewer will have a set of other questions for these questions. For example, in terms of ‘Investment project management’, the following may appear:
- Clarifying questions: i.e. questions that will allow you to understand the context of the situation you are talking about. For example, about the size of the project budget, specific difficulties, people involved, shifts in the schedule, inconsistencies in the documentation, etc.
- Deepening questions: i.e. questions about your behavior in this situation. What did you do when the budget was limited, how did you react to the lack of personnel resources, with whom and at what stage did you consult formal inconsistencies, etc.
- Questions about the effect: This is also an important element of this type of interview. You can expect questions about whether the deadline was met, according to what criteria the project was received, how the project budget was completed.
4. Be honest in your answers – don’t be afraid to talk about mistakes.
A very important element in answering behavioral questions is honesty and sincerity. Many questions will concern your successes and professional achievements. However, the employer knows perfectly well that they will not find an ideal employee and is looking for a person who can and wants to develop, and at the same time is able to draw conclusions from past mistakes. It is certainly not worth pretending to be infallible during a job interview. Therefore, it is also worth talking about the reflections and conclusions that you have drawn from the mistake you made. They can give the recruiter valuable and positive information about you.
5. Answer the interviewer’s questions by talking only about yourself.
Talking about yourself may seem very selfish, but for the recruiter it is extremely important, because you are the person being recruited, so it is natural that the recruiter is only interested in your experiences and not your friends from work or the team you worked with. Answer questions using phrases such as: my decision …., I noticed a mistake in …., my idea for this situation was …. Remember that you are talking about yourself, your participation in specific situations and your successes and sometimes failures.
6. Practice your answers in front of a mirror or friends.
Once you have prepared a list of all possible questions and answers that the recruiter may ask you during the interview, you should repeat them in front of a mirror or a friend – remember that it is not only important what you say but how you say it, try to make your answers substantive, show your self-confidence and make the whole story coherent and logical.
Summary
A general answer to a question about our behavior is not what the employer is looking for. The recruiter wants to find out in detail how we have dealt with specific situations, tasks or projects in the past. The premise of behavioral questions is the relationship between our experiences and their impact on future decision-making. Remember to stay calm during the interview, even if you did not anticipate the question the recruiter asked you, do not panic, everything you need to answer their question is in your head. After the interview, you can ask the recruiter to provide feedback to find out if the answers you provided met your expectations.
