Brace yourself for the behavioral interview

by Bob Weinstein

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April 26, 2001, 02:55 PM — ITworld.com —

Back in the old days, you could impress interviewers solely with drop-dead credentials. Today, a high-powered résumé will only get you into the ring. If you plan on going for the knockout, be prepared to demonstrate competency in the job for which you're competing. Companies are using the behavioral interview to weed out superstars. But if you're prepared, the behavioral interview is not as bad as it sounds.

The behavioral interview can be as beneficial for the candidate as it is for the employer. The questions give candidates clues as to what is important in the organization.

For example, consider this behavioral question: Tell me about a time when you had to work in a team and the others didn't seem to be pulling their fair share? This question tells you that the company may want you work in a team setting or perhaps have you manage a group of people on a project.

"The overall goal of the behavioral interview is to tell interviewers about candidates' attitudes, work habits, and skills by having them describe real actions taken in real circumstances rather than asking them to speak in the abstract about themselves," according to Allen Salikof, president and CEO of MRI, Inc., an executive search firm based in Cleveland, Ohio, with 750 offices throughout the United States.

Behavioral interviews can also be important for career-building IT candidates who want to identify state-of-the-art companies working on hot technologies.

By the same token, the behavioral interview can be particularly harrowing for techies lacking sophisticated communication skills, Salikof observes. "A lot of IT candidates are poor communicators," he says. "The behavioral interview forces them to be razor sharp."

How do you know whether you're going to be subjected to a behavioral interview? Watch for signals, Salikof advises. "Behavioral interviews often begin with a statement that interviewers will be looking for specific instances from real situations in answer to their questions and not to be nervous if it takes a few minutes to gather your thoughts to answer."

Don't panic if you wander toward generalities, says Salikof. "The interviewer will coax you back to specific examples, asking for the names of people, their titles and other concrete details," he says. "Often the interviewer will rephrase a question so it sounds different but elicits the same information."

The key to acing the behavioral interview is preparation. Salikof offers three helpful tips:

Decide what your chief skills or strengths are and fix in your mind actual experiences that exemplify each. Be sure to recall dates, names, measurements of success, and other details that will convey these realities to interviewers.
Understand the job description for which you are interviewing and be prepared to recall specific actions and behaviors that address the skills needed in the job.
Specificity is more important than vague proclamations of your skills. Small but telling actions and behaviors are more influential than grandiose but unsubstantiated claims of job success. "No one expects you to have single-handedly saved the world, the company, and your immediate boss from sure ruination," adds Salikof. "Employers simply hope you're the one who can effectively do the job they're hiring for."

The best advice? Tell it like it is. If you try to provide a programmed response, chances are the interviewer will have heard it before and it will sound canned. Another important ingredient for success in a lot of organizations is flexibility or the ability to adapt and learn. Questions may allow you to change your position or reflect on a time when you did or didn't succeed at a task. The interviewer may then ask what you would do differently next time around.

While behavioral interviews can be tricky, you can only do your best. We're only human. We make mistakes, but the stronger performers learn from them rather than sweep them under the rug. Companies simply want to invest in candidates who have the ability to enhance their value over time.

Not an unreasonable request.

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