By Jenifer Brown
More organizations in our industry are using behavioral interviews as part of their candidate screening process. Behavioral job interview questions can push candidates past generic answers by forcing them to relay personal history. These questions are used to give you an idea of how a candidate behaves in real situations, rather than their take on how you think they should have reacted.
What is a behavioral interview?
A behavioral interview is one in which the interviewer is focused on how candidates handled real situations in their past work experience. Candidates in a behavioral interview should use the STAR technique to answer the questions.
What is the STAR technique?
STAR stands for: Situation, Task, Action, Result. Candidates describe the situation they were in, the task they had to accomplish, the actions they took to get it done, and the result of their work.
Here are some common behavioral interview questions a candidate can use to prepare:
- Tell me about a stressful situation at work and how you handled it.
- Describe a time when you disagreed with your supervisor on how to accomplish something.
- Have you ever had to convince your team to do a job they were reluctant to do?
- Have you ever had a deadline you were not able to meet? What happened?
- Tell me about a time your co-workers had a conflict. How did you handle it?
- How have you prioritized when you’re assigned multiple projects?
- Tell me about a difficult work challenge you’ve had.
- Talk about a time when you had to adapt to big changes at work.
- How have you dealt with an angry or upset customer?
- Have you ever gone above and beyond to help a customer? What did you do?
- Tell me about a time when you had to fight for an idea at work.
- Talk about a time where you had to make an important decision quickly. What did you decide? What were the results?
- Have you ever been in a business situation that was ethically questionable? What did you do? What were the results?
- Have you ever had a project that had to change drastically while it was in progress? Why? How did you do it?
- Talk about a time when a co-worker was not doing their share on a project. How did you handle it?
- Tell me about a major setback you’ve had. How did you deal with it?
- What have you done when colleagues have been stressed out by a project?
- Talk about a difficult problem you’ve had to solve. How did you solve it?
- Have you ever had to defend a customer’s point of view? What did you do?
- Talk about a time when you’ve had to sell an idea to your colleagues.
- Tell me about a problem you solved in a creative way.