I have gotten a lot of questions over the years on Behavioral interviewing. It seems this interviewing approach is something that freaks a lot of people out when they are coming up with their game plan for the interview. It’s a tricky subject to tackle from a prep perspective because it seems that nobody can really agree on what Behavioral Interviewing really is. Is it asking questions about behavior? Is the interviewer trying to behave in a way to get you to act in a revealing fashion?
The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) has written a guide on behavioral interviewing where they describe behavioral interviewing as follows:
Behavioral interviewing focuses on a candidate’s past experiences by asking candidates to provide specific examples of how they have demonstrated certain behaviors, knowledge, skills and abilities. Answers to behavioral interview questions should provide verifiable, concrete evidence as to how a candidate has dealt with issues in the past. This information often reveals a candidate’s actual level of experience and his or her potential to handle similar situations in your organization.
emphasis mine
Often, these questions will follow a formula like “Tell me of a time when…” or “Describe a situation where…”. These are intentionally open-ended questions that are designed to allow you to structure the answer how you want. Examples could include:
- Tell me of a time when you had a conflict with a coworker.
- Describe a situation where you made a mistake.
- Walk me through a scenario where you disagreed with your boss.
Notice how each of those questions are parsed in a way to force you to tell a story? That is intentional. The whole point of behavioral interviewing is to guide the interviewee to telling a story.
So how should we prepare for a behavioral interview? After all, we don’t know what sorts of stories the interviewer will want to hear about. And it’s way too much work to prepare for every single possible type of question they could ask. The answer is to prepare for the hard questions and rely on your ability to think on your feet for the rest.
And in fact, many behavioral questions are not super hard. “Tell me about a success you have had at work” is a common question and not something I suspect you will need to spend a lot of time thinking about. When I am prepping candidates I try to focus on categories of questions that tend to catch people off guard. I focus on categories as opposed to specific questions because I don’t know exactly how they are going to frame the question – if they have an answer prepared for that category of question they are likely to be able to tailor their answer on the fly to fit whatever is asked. That may sound confusing but you’ll see what I mean in a moment.
Category 1: Conflict with Coworker
This is a super common behavioral interviewing topic simply because just about every job will involve some sort of interaction with people, and friction between coworkers is a frustrating problem for hiring managers. One bad apple can poison a great team. Many interviewers will ask a question or two in this category in order to detect any future problems. Versions of this question can include:
- Tell me of a time when you had a conflict with a coworker.
- Describe a story where you noticed a coworker made a mistake.
- Tell me about a time where you caused a problem and your coworkers had to cover for you.
- Describe a time you had to deal with a disgruntled colleague.
- Tell me a story about when a coworker made a mistake that caused extra work for you.
In general, a good story you will want to tell will show you using your communication skills to deescalate the conflict. An “okay” story will involve you getting your manager involved. A “bad” story will involve you saying something like ‘not my responsibility’.
A good example is below:
Tell me of a time you had a conflict with a coworker.
I worked as a waiter at a restaurant when I was in college. Early in my time there I had a coworker who was upset that I was taking the good tables and earning more tips than they were. They gave me the cold shoulder and would refuse to train me in things so that I would mess up and get let go. After a particularly frustrating shift I asked them to sit down at the bar so we could hash things out. It turns out that this coworker was a single mother and was very stressed for money at the time. We decided to work together to make sure that we were splitting tables evenly, and we ended up becoming great friends!
“But wait,” you say, “I don’t have a story that matches the question! I am a genial, likable person that does not get into conflicts at work!” Well, I guarantee you get into conflicts at work but perhaps they aren’t particularly juicy. You can describe a friendly disagreement about the best path forward during a meeting as a conflict, and talk about how you were able to persuade the other person that your idea was the best. Or you can talk about something as simple as a sports rivalry in the office. You get to decided what ‘conflict’ means. That’s the nice thing about behavioral interviewing – you get to define the terms!
Category Two: Conflict with Supervisor
This category is similar to the first, but obviously is more concerned with your relationship with your supervisor. Versions of this question can include:
- Think about a time when management made a difficult decision. What was the situation? How did you behave?
- Tell me about a time where you got in a fight with your boss.
- Consider a time when your boss made a decision that you did not agree with. What did you do?
You get the idea. The interviewer (often your future boss) is trying to get a sense of how much of a hassle you are going to be. Sometimes this question can be parsed in way that reveals previous problems this manager has had with employees, sometimes it’s something that’s taught in training. Either way, you should be ready for it.
Consider the question:”Tell me about a time your Boss made a decision you didn’t agree with. How did you communicate this issue to other employees?”
- A Bad answer will involve you telling the other employees it was the wrong decision
- An Okay answer will involve you explaining the rationale behind the decision to other employees
- A Good answer will involve you aligning their behaviors to support the decision.
Naturally the safest answers involve you getting over your disagreement and executing your Boss’s vision. After all, that is what they want to hear from you. But there are managers out there that are looking for independent thinkers that aren’t afraid to push back. If you are one of those people that have a hard time executing someone else’s vision, especially if you disagree with them, I would suggest you come up with an answer that involves a happy ending. If your boss is going to tolerate disagreement, you should at least be advocating for the correct decision.
Category 3: Self Awareness
You could call this category ‘conflict with self’ if you like going with the conflict theme, but really this category is about your ability to critically self-judge. Sample questions could include:
- Tell me about a time you made a mistake at work.
- Describe a time you had a conflict of interest. What was the conflict? What did you do?
- Tell me about a time you made a wrong call.
- What was your biggest failure at work and what did you learn from it?
- Describe a time you failed to achieve a goal you set for yourself. What did you learn?
Many of these questions follow the ‘biggest weakness’ archetype I discuss in my greatest weakness article. I would suggest you dig into that to come up with a strategy, but the basic idea is to spend more time talking about the growing you did after making the mistake than about the mistake itself. The point is to highlight the growth, not the mistake.
Consider the question, “Tell me about a time you made a mistake at work.”
- A “Bad” answer will involve a long description of some sort of mistake, and will conclude with the devastating effects of your ineptitude, while lacking any sort of self-reflection.
- An “Okay” answer will involve a thorough description of the mistake and the actions you took to prevent that mistake again.
- A “Good” answer will involve a concise description of the mistake, what that mistake taught you, how you grew from it and the results from your growth. It will be an answer that is specific to your background.
Other Categories
You will find there are going to be questions that won’t fall into one of these categories – that’s okay. The idea here is not to be prepared for every single behavioral question (which is impossible), but to use the limited time you have before your interview to prepare for the hard ones. If you are ready for the hard ones, and are quick enough on your feet for the easy ones, you will be in good shape.
One last piece of advice: if you get thrown a curveball question, be honest. The whole point of these questions is to take you out of your comfort zone. A good interviewer will succeed at doing that, even if you have practiced and prepared. If you come to the interview expecting to be thrown off balance, and you enter the interview with that mindset, you will find that when they ask the goofy or weird questions you will feel much more confident. And confidence is sometimes all it takes to win the job.