Category: Interviewing

I attended a Webinar today on behavioural interviews, and thought I’d share some of their tips with you.

They cited a statistic that behavioral based interviewing is 2 to 5 times more likely to result in a successful match than traditional interviewing. Good news for both sides!

Behavioral questions are used to try to predict on the job behavior, and make sure the candidate will fit into the culture of the company. It can also reveal why the candidate is ready to leave their current company, why they behave the way they do, and sometimes can reveal how the hiring company compares to the competition. They can also uncover information that would not have been covered in a traditional interview, and it’s harder for the candidate to just give the answers they think they interviewer wants to hear.

In any interview, the interviewer is trying to asses the candidate’s knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) and how they match those needed for the position. These might include communication, problem-solving ability, coaching, creativity and innovation, and so on. Specific KSAs will be required for each position, and will be identified in advance by the company. A behavioral question will ask the candidate to provide a specific example of a time when he/she has exhibited each trait. To follow up, probing questions are used to make the candidate elaborate, and will often reveal if the candidate is fabricating. By asking each candidate the same questions, companies can avoid any appearance of favoritism or bias.

The interviewer is trying to draw out as much information and as many examples as possible, so they can really get an understanding of how the candidate thinks, and acts. The answers are then quantitatively evaluated against “ideal” answers, and higher scoring candidates are further evaluated.

I am currently in the midst of preparing 5 talks that I will be giving over the next 3 weeks. In each case I am using a variant of a talk I have given before, tweaking it for the anticipated audience and particular venue.

While I think I’ve done a pretty good job of customizing them, I always do an “audience analysis” at the start of each presentation. I ask the audience members about their level of education, background, and expectations for the talk. In that way, I can tailor it even more, to make sure I’m giving them what they want. Sometimes I cheat, when what they want isn’t what they need, but I do my best to always cover both.

Nowhere is this more important than in the job interview presentation. David G. Jensen has a great article on this topic, entitled Tooling Up: The Finer Points of Giving a Job Talk, where he talks about knowing your audience, as well as other typical interview talk mistakes. Check it out!

A colleague of mine is teaching a career management class at his local university. After presenting a mock interview, two of his students told him that “they did not need to practice interviewing. They knew their material and do not feel that preparation would allow them to feel natural. It would feel and appear too rehearsed.”

I certainly agree that you don’t want to have scripted, canned answers to the interview questions that you know you’re going to get. You should know what you’re going to talk about, but not have word-for-word memorized script. Similar to when you give a scientific presentation – you want to have the opening and closing down pat, but in the middle you just need to have confidence in your subject matter, know the story you’re going to tell, and know what segue you’re going to use to get to the next slide.

However, different interviewers will ask different questions, and the conversation will go down different paths. Maybe they’ll ask a question you never thought about, or make you think about something you did in a different way. An interview is not where you want to say “Gee, I never thought of that before!” Even if you don’t want to practice formal job interviews, you should spend time talking to colleagues and others about your possible career paths, your personal values, motivators and skills, and so on. Yes, you are the primary expert on yourself. But sometimes, it’s hard to put things into words – especially non-concrete things like feelings, wants and aspirations. The more you think about these things, and actually articulate them out loud, the better you will become at it.

And the better you become at articulating your own career goals, the better you will be able to not only understand, but also explain to a potential employer how your goals and theirs match. And isn’t that the point of the interview?