Monday, March 25, 2024

What Is Behavioral Based Interview Questions

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How Did You Finish Tasks With Conflicting Goals Or Deadlines

How to Answer “Behavior Based Interview Questions” – Interview Tip

Workload management is a key to productivity. Its not as simple as taking one task and following it solely to a conclusion. There are usually multiple assignments that one is responsible for, often with deadlines that are stacked on the same day and that can pull you in different directions at once. How does your candidate deal with that stress?

What youre looking for in the answer to this question is how much the candidate can take on at the same time and how efficient they are at managing their time across these various tasks. Listen to how creative they are in their problem-solving.

What Is A Behavioral Interview

A traditional interview involves open-ended questions that allow the job candidate to share information and opinions with the hiring manager. This interview approach often focuses on qualifications, personality, and hypothetical scenarios that leave room for the candidate to fabricate information and tailor responses to what they believe the interviewer wants to hear.

Behavioral interviews, on the other hand, focus on the candidate’s past performance and behavior to predict future performance and behavior in similar scenarios. Per Katharine Hansen, Ph.D., Creative Director and Associate Publisher of Quintessential Careers, traditional interview questions are said to be only 10 percent predictive of future on-the-job behavior, whereas behavioral interview questions are 55 percent predictive of this. Developed by industrial psychologists in the 1970s, behavioral interviews are also referred to as competency-based interviews.

How To Come Up With Great Success Stories

A great success story should mention details like who, what, when, where, and why. At the same time, its important to keep your story as concise and simple as possible during the interview.

The STAR Method can help you keep track of the information to include in your story. This trick helps ensure youre sharing all the details the hiring manager wants to hear.

STAR is an acronym:

  • S- Situation- Set the scene. Who, what, when, where, and why?
  • T- Task- What were you tasked to do? What was the goal?
  • A- Actions- Share specific actions you took. Try to match your actions to their job needs.
  • R- Results- What happened? What was the outcome? Be specific and share numbers when possible .

Begin by explaining the ituation. Provide all necessary context. What was going on? Set the stage for your interviewer.

Then share the ask, which should always be followed by the ctions you took to complete the task. End your story with the esults. What happened and why?

Always think about what additional information you can include to make your success story more powerful. As long as it is relevant to the story and demonstrates your job-related ability, include it. Then cut anything that feels like fluff or filler. Include all the necessary details, but keep it simple.

Resist the urge to embellish your story or make something up. The best stories are authentic. Plus, its difficult to remember a false story that could later come back to bite you.

Also Check: What Is The Best Answer For Interview Questions

Tell Me About A Time You Had To Work Closely With Someone Whose Personality Or Work Style Clashed With Yours

Its okay to be honest here, but dont bash your former colleague. Its important to show that you can be flexible and overcome challenges.

I had a supervisor who was ultra-creative, and so he had a creative persons impulse-driven approach to projects. I need more structure, so we worked together to develop an Asana project where he could add creative input when inspiration struck, and I had a central place for project notes to keep me on task.

Heres a tip:

Common Behavioral Interview Questions

Behavioral Based Interview Questions for 7 Key Behaviors ...

1. What makes an ideal coworker in your eyes?

2. How do you prioritize projects under pressure?

3. How would handle your schedule when its interrupted?

4. Have you ever bent company policy to satisfy a client?

5. How have you handled setbacks at work?

6. How do you handle job training if its going poorly?

7. Have you ever calmed down an angry client? How?

8. Tell me about some regrets in your previous job?

Read Also: What Language To Use For Coding Interviews

Behavioral Based Interview Questions To Uncover Motivation And Values

Several questions that recruiters often ask are designed to uncover the motivations of candidates. Do they want to stay at your company? Do they want to move up the corporate ladder? Or is their goal to jump ship at a better opportunity? Use these questions to learn about their different motivations and values.

1. Tell me about the professional accomplishment that youre most proud of. What was it and what sets it apart?

2. Give me an example of a time when you saw a problem at work. What steps did you take to correct the issue?

3. Tell me about a time when you worked under close supervision and under loose supervision. How did you handle each of those situations?

4. Describe a time where you werent happy with your work. What did you do? What could have made it better?

5. Describe a time where you had complete control over a task/project at work. What did you like/dislike about this? What was the result?

6. Tell me about a time when you had to prioritize your work over helping a teammate. What went into your decision-making process to choose yourself over them?

7. Describe a time when a team member came to you with a problem that required your help. What did you do?

Questions Related To Goals And Initiatives

1. How do you go about creating short and long-term goals for yourself and your team? What metrics do you use to keep everyone accountable?2. Provide an example of a time where you had to come to a decision quickly. What were the challenges you faced in making the decision and how did you make it?3. Describe a project where you were the owner. What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them?4. Tell me about a scenario where you discovered a problem that could become a potential opportunity? What did you do and what was the result?5. Tell me about a project you initiated. Why did you initiate it? What were the results?

Read Also: How To Prepare For Naturalization Interview

Behavioral Interview Questions To Prepare For

Behavioral interview questions are often asked in job interviews to gauge how successful you are at problem-solving. These questions can provide the interviewer with insight into your personality, skills and abilities. Because each behavioral interview question requires you to share a specific story that highlights your strengths and skills, thoughtful preparation can help you feel confident and prepared.

In this article, we offer some tips for preparing and responding to questions by topic and also offer 10 sample questions and examples to help you form your own answers.

Related:How to Prepare for a Behavioral Interview

Behavioral Interview Questions 1

How To Answer Behavioral Based Interview Questions – BEST Sample Answer

For questions like these, you want a story that illustrates your ability to work with others under challenging circumstances. Think team conflict, difficult project constraints, or clashing personalities.

  • Talk about a time when you had to work closely with someone whose personality was very different from yours.

  • Give me an example of a time you faced a conflict while working on a team. How did you handle that?

  • Describe a time when you struggled to build a relationship with someone important. How did you eventually overcome that?

  • We all make mistakes we wish we could take back. Tell me about a time you wish youd handled a situation differently with a colleague.

  • Tell me about a time you needed to get information from someone who wasnt very responsive. What did you do?

  • Read Also: How To Interview Candidates As A Recruiter

    Lets Look At A Sample Star Response

    Its time to put everything weve learned into practice with a sample behavioral question and answer. Lets walk through a STAR response using one of the sample conflict questions from above.

    Question: Walk me through a past conflict. What strategies did you use to resolve it?

    Sample Answer:

    Lets Break It Down

    Tell Me About A Time When You Went Above And Beyond To Deliver Exceptional Customer Service

    Saying that you go above and beyond every day is a cop-out. Think of a story you can relate here that will demonstrate how much you care about providing great customer service.

    We were preparing to give a video presentation to a potential new client when I learned that someone on their team was deaf. The presentation was scheduled for the following morning, so I stayed late captioning the video so shed be able to experience it. The client was impressed by our attention to detail and we landed the account.

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    What Are You Passionate About Outside Of Work

    While this behavioral interview question might not appear relevant to the job duties, it can offer you a view of how theyll work in the corporate culture of your organization. After all, All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

    If they dont answer the question satisfactorily, they probably have a poor work-life balance. If their answer is general, they might not be the creative type youre looking for, or they could be overly nervous, which speaks again to how theyll fit in the culture of the company.

    When You Had A Conflict With A Coworker How Did You Resolve It

    Answers to behavioral based interview questions

    This is like the above question, but from a different angle. The relationship between coworkers is crucial to the smooth-running of any project. That doesnt mean there wont be conflicts. Anyone working with someone else, be they intimates or strangers, will hit a rough patch or disagree on something.

    How they resolve that conflict says a lot about their ability to work with others. Youll learn how they see themselves in the conflict and what their priorities are as they relate to the coworker theyre opposing. Whether you would resolve the conflict the same way is less relevant than how effective the candidates approach was.

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    Examples Of Behavioral Interview Questions To Assess Teamwork

    Use these questions to assess how the candidate managed team conflict or fulfilled their responsibilities despite team challenges, or through a cooperation despite personality clashes.

    1. Can you give me an example of a time you faced conflict while working on a team? How did you handle/manage that situation and still fulfill your responsibilities?

    2. Describe a time when you had to collaborate with a team member in another department in your company. How did you overcome the differences in department goals?

    3. We all make mistakes in communication. Tell me about a time you wish youd handled communicating with a member of your team differently.

    4. Tell me about a time when you had to collaborate with a member of your team who was not responsive. How did you handle that situation? Were you able to fulfill your responsibilities and hit your goals?

    Behavioral Job Interview Questions About Teamwork

    Question #1 – Tell me about a time when you had to work with someone completely different from you. How did you adapt to collaborate better?

    Situation: Sure, I always enjoy working with new and different people. Usually, because they bring something new to the table. At Company X, there was a particularly young developer who was assigned to work with me on a new software development project, and I was to run him through what our typical coding process was like.

    Task: It was also my job to get to know him, and find common ground so that we could effectively work together. The fact that he was younger wasnt an issue for me, but because he was completely self-taught, he didnt know a lot about the industry methodologies we used.

    Action: Teaching him everything from scratch would take too much time. So, instead, I briefly explained the development process we were using for that specific project, and taught him how to write tests for our code-base. Writing tests is the number 1 way to learn what code does. After all, thats how I got started with development.

    Question #2 – What do you do when your team member refuses to, or just cant complete their part of the work? Give me an example.

    Action: I started regularly checking in on her to see where she was with work. I would bring it up at times over lunch, send a quick Slack message, and so on. She wasnt taking this quite well, but it DID get her to work faster and more efficiently.

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    Questions On Handling Stress

    How do you handle stress? is almost always asked in a behavioral interview. This is one answer you don’t want to come up with off the top of your head, so do your homework. Come up with real-life examples that highlight your stress-management skills.

    When responding, don’t blame others for the stress you felt. Instead, highlight how you used your amazing soft skills to overcome the stressful obstacle and ultimately succeed.

    Acknowledge that you do experience stress not doing so will make interviewers think you don’t take your job very seriously or that you’re lying. If you’re blanking on work examples, explain how you personally manage your stress. For example, sharing that you meditate or run to alleviate your stress shows the interviewer that you don’t let things bottle up until you burn out.

    What Is Something You Had To Learn Quickly Without Having Prior Knowledge Of It

    How to Answer BEHAVIORAL INTERVIEW QUESTIONS Using the STAR Method (TOP 10 Behavioral Questions)

    The work environment is a fast-changing one, and employees are expected to keep up with new skills and procedures. Its likely youll be hiring a person wholl have to undergo training before they take over the position, or at least at some point during their career with the company.

    You cant expect the candidate to know everything, but you can expect them to be fast learners. The way they answer this question will help you determine how confident they are when confronted with the unknown. Youll also have insight into how they learn and if theyre able to mentor others in passing on their own skills.

    Also Check: How To Crack Microsoft Program Manager Interview

    Whats A Mistake You Made At Work

    You could have just said, Tell me about your greatest weakness, but then you might get one of those pat answers like, Im too dedicated. To avoid the commonplace response, place your question in a real-life scenario where they must relate the answer to their own experience.

    How they respond will tell you how self-aware they are. Everyone makes mistakes, but what youll be listening for is how they define the thought process that lead them to the error, and how they learned from that mistake so as not to repeat it.

    Top Behavioral Interview Questions:

  • Tell me about a stressful situation at work and how you handled it.
  • Describe a time when you disagreed with your supervisor on how to accomplish something.
  • Have you ever had to convince your team to do a job they were reluctant to do?
  • Have you ever had a deadline you were not able to meet? What happened? What did you do?
  • Tell me about a time your co-workers had a conflict. How did you handle it?
  • How have you prioritized being assigned multiple projects?
  • Tell me about a difficult work challenge youve had.
  • Talk about a time when you had to adapt to big changes at work.
  • How have you dealt with an angry or upset customer?
  • Have you ever gone above and beyond to help a customer? What did you do?
  • Tell me about a time when you had to fight for an idea at work.
  • Talk about a time where you had to make an important decision quickly. What did you decide? What were the results?
  • Have you ever been in a business situation that was ethically questionable? What did you do?
  • Have you ever had a project that had to change drastically while it was in progress? Why? How did you do it?
  • Talk about a time when a co-worker was not doing their share on a project. How did you handle it?
  • Tell me about a major setback youve had. How did you deal with it?
  • What have you done when colleagues have been stressed out by a project?
  • Talk about a difficult problem youve had to solve. How did you solve it?
  • Have you ever had to defend a customers point of view? What did you do? Why?
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    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:

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