In last month’s issue,
we touched upon a topic—behavioral-based interviewing—that’s
designed to help ensure more targeted and more successful
hires. Although
the resume is what initially catches the eye, it’s the
characteristics and behaviors the candidate possesses that
should ultimately dictate whether or not they’re
hired.
The first part of the
behavioral-based interviewing process, as we discussed last
month, is to thoroughly evaluate the position you’re seeking
to fill. This
is important, since you need to know what specific behaviors
to look for.
The next step is the actual interviewing of the
candidates, and when it comes to behavioral-based
techniques, the questions you ask them are quite divergent
from standard interview questions.
‘Tell me about .
. .’
The main difference
regarding behavioral-based interviewing questions is that
they’re designed to probe deeper and to uncover more
information about the candidate. The key is to ask
questions that will elicit detailed responses revealing not
only the candidate’s skills, but also how they utilize those
skills and in what manner they facilitate their
problem-solving strategies and their character.
Some call this approach
STAR interviewing. The acronym stands
for Situation, Task, Action, & Result. You present the
background and the objective and then ask the candidate what
action(s) they would take to achieve certain results. Another option is to
ask the candidate to provide an example of a situation from
their career and then walk through how they dealt with
it.
The bulk of your
questions will be situational in nature, either addressing a
real situation from the past or a fictitious one that you’re
posing to the candidate. You can ask a
combination of both, or they can all be real situations from
the past.
However, it’s not recommended that they all be
hypothetical.
And it’s not enough to ask an initial question or two
and leave it at that.
Follow-up questions are essential to
discovering how the candidate will think and act in a given
situation—in short, how they’ll behave as a member of your
team.
For example, instead of
asking “Tell me about yourself,” you might say, “Tell me
about a situation where you had to overcome a conflict,
either between you and another co-worker or between two
other co-workers, in order to accomplish a common
goal.” And
while the candidate tells their story, you can ask
additional questions, such as “What were you thinking at
that point” or “What led you to make that particular
decision?”
These questions will help you to uncover the
candidate’s behaviors, characteristics, and interpersonal
skills.
In addition, this type
of interviewing technique is more difficult for the
candidate to navigate.
It requires them to answer questions they didn’t
foresee and helps to evaluate their ability to think and
respond quickly.
Almost anybody can answer questions well that they’re
prepared for.
Behavioral-based interviewing and the STAR approach
will not only reveal a candidate’s problem-solving
characteristics based upon situational questions, they’ll
also reveal something about his or her behavior based upon
the way they answer the questions themselves.
It’s all about
‘who they are’
Behavioral-based
interviewing requires a slightly different perspective and
frame of mind.
However, that difference can help you to not only
avoid a potentially bad hire, but also zero in on the
candidate who can help take your company to the next
level. That’s a
win-win situation—and you win both times. While it’s true that
behavioral-based interviewing is more time-consuming from
beginning to end, it can be much more effective at finding a
candidate who’s a fit all the way around.
According to one of the
trainers in the recruiting industry, “People are hired
for what they do, and they’re fired for who they
are.”
If you hire people both for who they are and
what they do, you’ll find they might be stars at your
company for a long, long time.
(Okay—you’ve hired your
star candidates both for what they do and who they are. What’s the next
step? The
answer may surprise you: retention. That’s right. Retention of key
employees is a process that begins the moment the candidate
accepts your offer and becomes an employee. In next month’s
issue, we’ll discuss some steps you can take to not only
ensure that your next star employee hits the ground running,
but also reaffirm in that employee’s mind that they made the
right decision to join your team.)
