Behavioral Interviewing

In the past, most interviews consisted of the typical questions such as, "where do you see yourself in 5, 10 years?"  While these types of questions served a purpose they are quite limited and don't demonstrate skill sets or how individuals react to situations.  As a result more organizations have turned to open-ended questions that make the candidate think about situations and how they were handled.

These types of questions are better known as behavioral questions and are used to provide an organization with a better idea of how a candidate handles themselves in certain situations and what results were obtained through their actions.  Typically the interviewer will have a particular skill set in mind and will tailor their questions around these skill sets.  The interviewer is hoping to see these skill sets demonstrated through the responses to the behavioral questions.

Make sure to pay attention to the question and begin to think of situations that will help demonstrate your skills to the interviewer.  The one thing you really want to avoid is providing a one word answer.  The interviewer really wants to hear your thought process and the outcomes of your action.  Your answer, should be thorough and a good way to approach these questions is by keeping the following acronym in mind: S.T.A.R.  The S.T.A.R. approach should contain the following four steps:

• S - Situation: describe the situation that relates to the question
• T - Task: describe the tasks taken during the situation
• A - Action: describe in detail, the actions taken during the task
• R - Result: what happened due to your actions

In the upcoming blog we will go over a few examples of these questions and what type of responses organizations are looking for.  Please feel free to post any questions or comments that you may have about behavioral interviewing.