Taking Your Interviews from Good to Great – Tip #2

Have you ever hired someone who knocked your socks off during the interview only to see her performance fall short when you hired her? There are plenty of candidates who have mastered the art of interviewing; unfortunately, once hired you find out they haven’t perfected the art of performing. While there is no silver bullet there are several techniques that will help you gather information to make more informed hiring decisions.

Our last post examined the first interview technique – creating a custom interview guide – to take your interviews from good to great! This week we’ll explore a second interview technique, conducting a behavior based interview.

What is a behavior based interview?
The behavior-based interview is based on the premise that the best predictor of future performance is past performance. In other words, what a person has done in the past is an important predictor of what a person will do in the future. A behavior-based interview focuses on gathering concrete data on past job performance. Here are a few examples of behavior-based questions.

• Tell me about your most difficult sales call in the past 6 months.
• Tell me about a time you encountered an unexpected obstacle that interfered with your ability to get the job done.
• Tell me about the most challenging customer complaint you resolved in the past year.

You’ll notice an incredible thing happening when you begin asking behavior-based questions. As your candidate describes a particular work situation you get a clear sense of how they typically handle customers, co-workers, and managers. You begin to imagine how their work habits will work in your environment and you are able to more accurately assess their “goodness of fit.”

Equally important to asking a behavior-based question is knowing what to listen for so you can appropriately evaluate the strength of your candidate’s response. Let’s return to the question mentioned earlier, “Tell me about a time you encountered an unexpected obstacle that interfered with your ability to get the job done.” Your candidate’s work-related example will provide insight into his determination and creativity in overcoming obstacles and challenges. You will listen carefully for his persistence, his creativity in overcoming an obstacle while working within company guidelines, and his definition of an obstacle. Using your candidate’s examples you will be able to evaluate if he’s the right person for the role.

Behavior-based interviews are proven to the most reliable technique to gather relevant job-related information and should account for the majority of your interview questions. Check back next week for the third interview technique that will take your interviews from good to great, using the acronym SARGE to evaluate the strength of your candidate’s responses.

Do you need assistance in developing your manager’s competence with behavior-based interviewing? Contact JS Performance Strategies to develop your manager’s behavior-based interviewing skills.