Why You Need Success Stories To Give Fantastic Answers To Behavioral Questions
A success story is a short story from your past that highlights a specific quality or competency that you possess.
Usually a success story revolves around a past work experience. However, for recent grads or those with little work experience a Success Story can be taken from other events in your life such as school clubs, athletic teams, volunteer work etc The point is it must highlight the quality they are looking for.
For example, lets go back to our leadership question: Tell me about a time when you took the lead on a difficult project?
NOTE: This is a typical project manager interview question.
In order to answer this well you obviously need to relate a success story from your past that shows you demonstrating leadership qualities.
The key is, you need to be prepared with your success story BEFORE you find yourself sitting on the hot seat faced with this question.
Instead, you need to effortlessly pull out a success story that is perfect for the situation.
Here is an example of Success Story that is both appropriate for the leadership question above and based on some of my own past experience. In this case, I was working at a car dealership as a service advisor :
Now dont forget, on its own this is not an answer to a behavioral interview question, but merely a success story to reference in your interview answer. You will want to frame your answer around this success story .
I know what youre thinking:
Tell Me About Your Best And Worst Days At Work
This interview question from Chris ONeill, CEO of Evernote, is a great way to gauge someones outlook and perspective. Heres his insider interview tip:
The answers are very revealing. Best day answers demonstrate what makes that person tick, what motivates them. Worst day answers tell whether a person is a team playerif their response focuses on what went wrong, without taking any ownership, there is a good chance they wont thrive in a collaborative environment.Chris ONeill
I would recommend taking this a step further and thinking about what your ideal answer to this question is as an interviewer. If you were to ask your top performers this behavioral interview question, how would they answer? What examples would they give?
If you find a candidate who has similar answers to your top performersthey are a winner!
Behavioural Interview Questions To Ask Candidates
Learning about a candidates attitudes, work habits, and decision-making processes can help add context to the resume and cover letter they provide. Understanding these types of characteristics can help you make sure they are the right fit for the job and your team. You can use a behavioural interview to determine how candidates approach their work and how they think about the important decisions theyll make as part of their daily responsibilities on your team. These questions might focus on how theyve overcome challenges, achieved their goals, and made challenging decisions.
To support your hiring process, here are 10 behavioural interview questions you can use when hiring your next employee.
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Adaptability: Tell Me About A Time When You Had To Demonstrate Adaptability
Context: I was working as project lead on a major marketing campaign for my company when by coincidence, two weeks before launch, a competitor launched a campaign that was very similar in content. Pushing ahead with our plans would have seemed like we were copying our competitor, even though wed already been working on our campaign for weeks.
Action: I knew we had to immediately change tack, so I called an emergency meeting with my team. We had a huge brainstorming session having already done our research, and with our goals unchanged, it was more about changing the look and feel of the content, and coming up with a few fresh ideas.
I quickly mapped out a new plan and assigned various team members to create the new content. I also enlisted the help of a freelancer who I knew would be able to produce quality content quickly. It was all hands on deck and we all worked some long days in those two weeks before deadline.
Result: With a large dose of hard work and good humour, we managed to launch on time and produce a very successful campaign that generated a 28% spike in leads. In the end I felt that the new content was even better than what we had originally planned, and I was very proud of the way my team and I were able to quickly pivot and deliver.
Now that youve prepared for questions you may be asked in an interview, do you know what questions you should ask the interviewer in return? Discover some of the best questions to ask in an interview.
Tell Me About A Time When A Patients Family Was Dissatisfied With Your Care How Did You Handle That Situation
How to answer:
Make sure to explain the situation in detail including both perspectives . Never talk badly about patients or their families. Take ownership if you indeed did something wrong. Share any positives that came from this – what did you learn? What would you do differently now? How did you turn this into a positive?
I once was floated to a unit that I had never worked in and wasnt sure where supplies were located. The mother of the patient did not recognize me as a regular floor nurse on the unit and this already made the family leery of me from the start of the shift. I continually had to prove myself throughout the day because as nurses we all do things slightly differently. There is not always a wrong way or a right way to do things but in this case, there was a policy to be followed. I followed it and apparently my dressing change was slightly different than previous ones. I communicated regularly with the charge nurse and she came to check in with the family to address any issues in real-time.
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Why Employers Ask Behavioral Questions
Behavioral questions are designed to learn how you would respond to a specific workplace situation, and how you solve problems to achieve a successful outcome.
Behavioral interview questions are generally formatted by presenting a situation, inquiring about what action you have taken to respond to something similar in the past, and what the result was.
The interviewer will ask how you handled a situation, and you will need to respond with an explanation of what you did. The logic is that your success in the past is a positive indicator of your success in the future.
Essential Tips for Answering Top Behavioral Questions
More Tips For Responding To Behavioral Interview Questions
- Take a moment: These questions are far from a yes-or-no inquiry. If you need a moment to think, take ityour interviewer should be understanding.
- Don’t ramble: Using the STAR technique should help keep you on track. Remember, you don’t need to get too into the weeds on the nitty-gritty details of the situation and task. Describe it in broad strokes and avoid any company-specific jargon that might stand in the way of the interviewer following your story.
- Tell a good story: By sharing on-point examples, you’ll keep the interviewer engaged and demonstrate your strengths as a candidate.
- Quantify if you can: If your action resulted in a quantifiable resultsuch as improved sales or reduced customer complaintsbe sure to mention that.
- Rehearse in advance: No need to memorize your responses. After all, you can’t completely predict which behavioral interview questions will come up. But practicing a few stories will help you feel confident at knowing how to frame them and may train you to think of past experiences in terms of the situation-task-action-result formula.
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Rattling Off A Memorized Answer
If your answer came verbatim from a guide like this one abort.
Big questions like, What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? A lot of people say, Oh, heres how you answer that. But doing a canned answer on those is bad. And its very evident, Brown said.
As a rule of thumb: If you know the general content of your answer and a few bullets youd like to hit, thats good. If youve memorized the words youd like to say, it will likely come off stiff.
Sometimes We Have An All
Like it or not, were working more hours these days. Although you dont want to become a slave to the office, if your prospective employer has asked you this question, you can be sure shes going to need you to be a team player.
I try to keep a good work/life balance, so Id do my best to help my team meet project goals during working hours. That said, crunch times happen. Im dedicated to putting in the extra hours when they become necessary.
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Learn About The Company
It can be helpful to research the company. As with the job listing, this research will give you a sense of the qualities and abilities that interviewers will prioritize.
If time permits, conduct informational interviews with professional contacts in the field to get input regarding the preferred skills, knowledge bases, and personal qualities of successful employees in that type of job.
Give Me An Example Of How You Have Worked On A Team
Most jobs require some degree of collaborative work. In a job interview, an employer may ask you this question to get a better sense of how you work with others, especially if the role for which you are applying involves a lot of teamwork.
To respond, you should give a clear example of when you worked on a team, and discuss how you interact with your fellow team members.
In my last job, I was a core contributor to our SEO team. My boss was leading a project to help us boost our domain authority, and I was assigned to optimize a number of our existing articles.
Every day, I participated in a stand-up with my colleagues to keep them abreast of my progress, and during this short meeting we also offered each other our help and support if anyone was encountering any troubles.
To ensure we met our goals, I constantly checked in with my team members, and I also decided to pair up with another team member who was assigned to a similar project so that we could share best practices.
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Tell Us About A Time When You Failed
In my previous company, I was given the responsibility of being a project lead. Knowing how important this project was to the organization, I was very nervous, and I really wanted to get it done before the deadline.
After dividing the tasks amongst the group members, we worked very hard to give our best. Unfortunately, I was unused to being in charge, and my nervousness led to some poor time management, and our project ended up being slightly delayed.
But, that experience helped me to find the gaps in my skill set, and it helped me a lot to become a better leader in future projects.
The Finer Points On Answering Common Behavioral Based Questions During Interviews
Dont feel you must immediately provide an answer.
Think about the question before you answer which of the examples of your accomplishments would provide an answer to the question asked?
Ask for a clarification, if that would be helpful.
Or simply say something like,
Thats an interesting question. Let me think about that for a second
Then, after a short pause while you gather your thoughts, use the strategies described below to answer the questions successfully.
Be sure to give enough details to make it clear that you are describing a genuine experience. When appropriate, use the same example to answer more than one of the behavioral interview questions.
Expect follow-up questions asking for clarification or requesting more details about the situation.
Throughout the process of answering these types of questions you will be slipping in the soft skills you leveraged .
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How Would You Handle A Tiff With A Peer
Conflicts are tough to handle, no doubt. Stress on the fact about how you dealt with the delicate situation with maturity and how you spoke openly with that peer to sort all differences out. The interviewer will check how good you are with working in a team and keeping it intact. You also need to tell him that you avoided the same in the future.
Time Management Interview Questions
68. When you schedule out the work you need to do, how do you decide what to do first?
69. Can you tell me about a project you were in charge of? How did you organize the tasks and make sure everything got done?
70. Can you describe a time when you were part of multiple projects at the same time? How did you handle the workload?
71. When you have multiple requests from customers or co-workers, how do you prioritize them?
72. Can you tell me about a time when you were behind on a project? What did you do?
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Business Analyst Behavioral Interview Questions And Answers
Business analysts require soft skills and technical skills, which can be difficult to interview for. Ideally, youll want a candidate who has a blend of soft skills as well as the technical know-how to lead a company in the right direction, using hard facts and statistics. Heres what to ask:
Interview Questions About Teamwork
59. What role do you normally take on a team? Why?
60. Can you tell me about your most recent experience working with a team? What was your role? How did you interact with the other team members?
61. Can you talk about a time when team members disagreed with you? What did you do?
62. Can you describe a time when you tried to solve a dispute within the team? What was the result?
63. Was there ever a time when you were part of a team where the people didnt get along? What happened? What did you do?
64. Can you talk about a time when your team members had to compromise? What was the result?
65. Can you describe a time when a team member wasnt doing their work? What did you do?
66. Can you describe a time when you had to delegate work among a team? How did you decide who would do each task? Is there anything you would do differently?
67. Can you tell me about a time when you let your team down? What did you do? How did you react?
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What Is Your Approach To Solving Complicated Problems Whats An Example Of A Time When You Used Your Skills To Resolve A Complex Issue
Most employees need critical thinking and problem-solving skills to succeed in the workplace. This question allows candidates to explain the process they use to solve problems. You can use that information to determine whether their process suits the types of challenges you often face in your business.
Tell Me About A Time When You Had To Rely On Written Communication To Explain Yourself To Your Team Or To A Patient
How to answer:
Talk about a time when you successfully relied on written communication. What were the circumstances? What was being discussed? How did you ensure success?
Most hospitals utilize a text feature to relay quick communication to the medical team. It is important to be concise and give all of the important information. This way the medical team can determine the best course of action.
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Describe A Time You Were Faced With A Patient Who Chose Not To Communicate Or Disclose Important Information How Did You Handle The Situation And What Was The Outcome
How to answer:
Tell a story about a patient you worked within a similar situation. What step-by-step actions did you take to obtain the information from the patient? What were the results of your actions?
A parent once didnt disclose that the father of the child was not her current boyfriend. This was important as the patient was going to need consent forms signed and legally, this boyfriend was not able to sign the consent forms. Additionally, there was a man calling the unit claiming to be the father of the child. Social work and the nurse manager were notified. Through an open conversation, the mother disclosed the correct identity of the father. While I personally did not discover the information, it is essential to know the resources that are available to you and utilize them to the best of your ability.
Behavioral Questions Can Be Challenging For Interviewers To Ask And For Job Candidates To Answer Here’s How To Handle The Most Common
If you’re an interviewer and like to ask behavioral interview questions, you’ll like the following list of behavioral interview questions. And if you’re a job candidate trying to prepare to answer behavioral interview questions at your next job interview, you’ll love the matching list of behavioral interview answers.
Even though most interviews include at least a few of the most common interview questions, and even if the candidate is asked to answer one or two unusual interview questions , the answers can seem a little too rehearsed and a lot insincere.
That’s one of the problems with asking opinion-based questions. Say you ask, “How important do you feel honesty and integrity is in the workplace?” How else do you expect the candidate to answer that question?
So, most interviewers mix in at least a few questions that are designed to elicit facts, not opinions. Since you can’t rely on what candidates say they will do, you can learn a lot from things they have already done — while not always the case, the past is at least a fairly reliable indicator of the future.
How do you do that?
First ask one of the following behavioral interview questions. Then follow up ask questions so you can fully understand the situation the candidate describes, determine exactly what the candidate did , and find out how things turned out.
And keep in mind follow-up questions don’t need to be complicated. Keep it simple:
6. “Tell me about a time you needed to motivate a co-worker.”
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