7 Behavioral Interviewing Questions

This guest post was submitted by Adrienne Graham.  Adrienne is the CEO of Hues Consulting & Management Inc. a full service recruitment consulting firm specializing in venture funded start-ups, and small to mid-sized business on a growth pattern. She is also CEO & Founder of Empower Me! Corporation, a media, publishing and professional development organization for the upwardly mobile professional. She is the voice behind Views From the Top Radio Show. She has taken what started as a small professional network for women, and turned into an international multimedia and networking power brand.
Adrienne is the author of Go Ahead, Talk to Strangers and Get Recruited. 

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No doubt, the recruitment process is a fact-finding mission

Recruiters and hiring managers meet and speak with dozens of candidates to find that perfect match (or at least someone with the potential to be perfect).  It’s not as simple as placing an ad, asking a few questions, then making a decision to offer the job to the one who answered best. With the market as it is today, with so many people out of work and seeking employment, employers have the privilege to take their time to find just the right hire.

Conducting an interview is much more than asking about previous work history. When hiring, you want to be sure you’re assessing not just talent, but also emotional stability, ethics, initiative, critical thinking, problem solving and communication. Simply asking questions about past job duties will not yield you the answers you seek. Behavioral interviewing is a type of interviewing that recruiters and hiring managers use to determine if past experience will predict future success. While there is no perfect way to be sure this past experience is an indicator, you want to be certain you’re asking the right questions to get the right kind of answers that will help you properly evaluate each candidate. In some cases, behavioral interviewing can help in reducing the pool of candidates and it is generally more valid than traditional Q&A interviews.

For starters, set up the interview structure so that more than one person is asking questions and making evaluations. You can delegate certain questions so that no two interviewers are asking the same thing. Make sure that while you all have separate questions to ask, you’re all taking your own notes as the questions are being asked.  When you ask questions, be sure to phrase them so the candidate can give you the problem (situation), their task in solving the problem (behavior/action), solution arrived at (results), and resolution of the situation (outcome). At no time should a candidate speak in generalities “normally, one would…”. You want to get into their mode of thinking. They should be giving you examples they have personally experienced and walk you through the scenario through the final resolution. You should be able to gauge how effective the person was during said crisis.  Mixing up a balance of good scenarios with challenging scenarios will give you a broader insight into the candidate’s achievements.

After the interview, you all can compare your notes to make sure that you all are close enough in your observations to make sound decisions about the next round.

Here are some sample ideal questions to ask during behavioral interviews:

Leadership

• Tell me about a time when you were able to step into a situation, take charge and muster support to achieve the desired results.
• Tell me about a time when you have had to discipline or fire a subordinate.  Were there any instances where this person was considered a friend? If so, how did you handle the situation?
• Talk about a situation where you were charged with developing leaders underneath you. Speak to your style of developing leaders while still maintaining a leadership role.

Problem Solving

• Describe for me a situation where you may have missed an obvious solution to a problem. How did you recover from the miss and was it something that did harm?
• Tell me about a time when you anticipated a problem and were able to develop preventative solutions to keep it from occurring.
• When faced with a problem, how do you attack it? Talk about a specific incident where you had to analyze facts quickly, define key issues, and respond immediately with a plan of action to produce the desired results.

Working Effectively With Others

• Give me an example that would show that you have been able to develop and maintain productive relationships with others in light of differing points of view.
• Tell me about a time when your team was veering off track and you were instrumental in bringing the team back in focus and on track. What did you do to ensure there would be no more derailments?
• Talk about how you motivate others when there are so many different personalities and work styles.

Decision Making

• Describe a time when you had to make an important decision based on only having minimal facts. What
  was the situation and how did you come to the proper resolution?
• If the decision was a bad one, how did you recover from it?
• Describe for me a time when you had to adapt to a difficult situation. Describe the situation and what you did to overcome it.

Delegation

• Describe for me a time when you had to delegate to a person who had an already full workload. How did you manage that person’s workload and reaction to the additional work?
• Tell me about a time when you had to take on additional work (back from a subordinate) to complete a task.
• Describe how you know when it is time to take a few things off your own plate and delegate the work to abled employees. How did you decide what to delegate and who should get what?

Follow Through

• Give me an example of a situation where you have to overcome a major obstacle to achieve your objectives.
• Tell me about a time when you used your “political savvy” to push a program or initiative through that you really believed in.
• Tell me about a time when you won (or lost) a major contract, opportunity or client and how you determined your next course of action to rectify the situation.

Ethics

• Give me an example of an ethical decision you had to make on the job. What factors did you consider before reaching your final decision?
• Tell me about a time when you’ve observed someone  stretching the rules or testing the boundaries at work. What was your own course of action?
• We’ve all done things we’ve regretted. Tell me about a time when you’ve done something in the workplace that you later regretted and how youwould handle it differently today.

Keep in mind, your questions will vary depending on the type of job and level of experience candidates have. Use these as guidelines for developing your own set of questions. The bottom line is you have to tailor your questions to get to the heart of how a person uses their critical thinking and problem solving skills. Make sure you’re getting comparable experiences that would reflect how the candidate would handle a situation at your company.

Happy hiring!