What is Behavioral Interviewing?

Behavioral interviewing is an interview methodology built on the premise that “the best indicator of what a person will do tomorrow is what he or she did yesterday.”  Behavioral interviews focus on specific experiences of candidates, as opposed to “what-if” scenarios.

Why do companies conduct behavioral interviews?

Traditional interviewing typically involves a brief review of the candidates’ experience focused on the technical aspects of a particular position, and a whole lot of “gut feeling” on the part of the interviewer.

“Gut feeling” Interviewers tend to hire people they like, people that have similar backgrounds to the interviewer, or people who just plain interview well.  The result is that, unfortunately, the “best candidate” for the job often isn’t hired.  Worse still, “gut feeling” interviewing exposes organizations to potential lawsuits when best-qualified candidates are overlooked.

Structured, behavioral interviewing can dramatically increase success because:
1)    It provides a more objective, replicable process to evaluate and compare candidates.
2)    It increases the likelihood of identifying the best candidate for the job.
3)    It reduces turnover and, therefore, lost training time.
4)    It can help protect an organization from lawsuits.
Behavioral interviewing increases hiring success by almost 50%.

Here is a sample model for Competency based Behavioral Interviewing Model:

Competency-based Interviewing Model:
   
Step 1.     Assemble job information
-Ask yourself: What does this person do?
-List duties/responsibilities

Step 2.     Link skills to tasks
-Derive the skills needed to perform duties
-Skills can be duplicated
-Make a master list, eliminating duplicates

Step 3.     Pick the skills to interview for
-Cross out skills that should be assessed elsewhere
-Eliminate skills that do not distinguish superior performance
-Highlight questions you want to probe

Step 4.     Develop interview questions from competencies
-Identify target behaviors for each competency
-Write 2-3 interview questions per competency

Step 5.     Modify Interview with Big 5 Personality Assessment (optional)

Step 6.     Listen for complete responses
-Stay in control: Dealing with difficult candidates -Situation, Behavior, Outcome
-Use probes to obtain missing information

Step 7.     Assess
-Use structured rating materials
-Document
-Turn downs (declines)
-Assess yourself

Sample Questions:

Decision Making and Problem Solving

Give me an example of a time when you had to keep from speaking or making a decision because you did not have enough information.

Give me an example of a time when you had to be quick in coming to a decision.

Leadership

What is the toughest group that you have had to get cooperation from?

Have you ever had difficulty getting others to accept your ideas? What was your approach? Did it work?

Motivation

Give me an example of a time when you went above and beyond the call of duty.

Describe a situation when you were able to have a positive influence on the action of others.

Communication

Tell me about a situation when you had to speak up (be assertive) in order to get a point across that was important to you.

Have you ever had to "sell" an idea to your co-workers or group? How did you do it? Did they "buy" it?

Interpersonal Skills

What have you done in the past to contribute toward a teamwork environment?

Describe a recent unpopular decision you made and what the result was.

Planning and Organization

How do you decide what gets top priority when scheduling your time?

What do you do when your schedule is suddenly interrupted? Give an example.

Other Behavioral Questions

Give a specific example of a policy you conformed to with which you did not agree.

Give me an example of an important goal which you had set in the past and tell me about your success in reaching it.

Describe an instance when you had to think on your feet to extricate yourself from a difficult situation.

- DeTimes

“To be a great champion, you must believe you are the best. If you’re not, pretend you are.”

-Muhammad Ali

Interview in a very tricky process. There is no standard 100% success formula of winning an interview. Interviewers use interviews as a process to eliminate your candidacy. Every question they ask you is used to differentiate you from other candidates. It is done to determine whether what you have fits the organization’s missions and goal.

“So, why don’t you tell me about yourself?” is the most frequently asked question. There are more than 100 ways to answer this open-ended question. It is the most expected question and the most difficult to answer, usually. The key to answer this and other questions in any interview is to offer a response that supports your objective. You must answer in such a way that the interviewer doesn’t respond with comments on your hobbies, extra-curricular activities, spouse, etc. Trust me, interviewers aren’t interested.

Here are some tips that will prove useful in answering this or such questions.

1.       Provide a brief introduction, emphasizing on those attributes that are important for the position you are being interviewed for.

2.       Summarize your career history. This is the main part of your response to this question. It must support your career objective and must sound compelling to the interviewer.

3.       Don’t assume that interviewer will do the hard work all the time. Tie-in your response to the needs of the organization. You must connect these dots for the interviewer to create a compelling perception.

4.       Ask an insightful question. It is usually not the answer but the question that enlightens. By asking a question you gain control of an interview. However, don’t do it just for the sake of it. Do it to engage the interviewer into a conversation to gain useful insight/information.

5.       Interviewer will deal the cards, but you have the ACE. It is up to you to play your cards well.

Some other such tricky questions:

1.       “Tell me about a time when you had to rely on a team to get things done.”

2.       “Provide an example of a time when you had to persuade people to do something that they didn’t want to do.”

3.       “Give me an example of your leadership style.”

25 of the most often asked questions in a behavioural interview.  Tell me about a time when:

1.       …worked effectively under pressure.

2.        …handled a difficult situation with a co-worker.

3.        …were creative in solving a problem.

4.        …missed an obvious solution to a problem.

5.        …were unable to complete a project on time.

6.        …persuaded team members to do things your way.

7.        …wrote a report that was well received.

8.        …anticipated potential problems and developed preventive measures.

9.        …had to make an important decision with limited facts.

10.   …were forced to make an unpopular decision.

11.    …had to adapt to a difficult situation.

12.    …were tolerant of an opinion that was different from yours.

13.    …were disappointed in your behaviour.

14.    …used your political savvy to push a program through that you really believed in.

15.    …had to deal with an irate customer (co-worker/boss/subordinate).

16.    …delegated a project effectively.

17.    …surmounted a major obstacle.

18.    …set your sights too high (or too low).

19.    …prioritized the elements of a complicated project.

20.    …got bogged down in the details of a project.

21.    …lost (or won) an important contract.

22.    …made a bad decision.

23.    …had to fire a friend.

24.    …hired (or fired) the wrong person.

25.    …turned down a good job.

So, you will have realized by now that answering this question effectively, gives you the opportunity to talk about your strengths, achievements and fitness for the position. Take this golden opportunity and run towards a victory.  

- DeTimes

Companies hire Project Managers as CareTakers Who can Do these Things in a better Way and independently:

* Design Solutions.
* Excellent communications skills.
* Bring “closure” to projects and issues.
* Establish clear understanding of goals and objectives.
* Detect shifts in priorities and direction to avoid “scope creep”.
* Project and change management control.
* Manage client requirements, specifications, and expectations.
* Advise on complex matters to non-specialists/non-technical.
*Client advocate.
* Manage and lead people.
* Problem resolution coordination.
* Break work down into manageable units.
* Project status reporting.
* Manage project plans.
* Cross-team coordination.
* Implement best practices and new processes.
* Ensure project’s success.

So I think, the basis of interviewing should be constituted on these aspects.

The questions can go like these:

Generic:
Q. Why are you considering leaving your present job?
Q. What are your goals for the future?
Q. How do you handle stress and pressure?
Q. What do you know about our company?
Q. We have met several candidates. Why are you the project manager we should hire?
Q. What are your greatest strengths?
Q. Tell me about your greatest weakness?

Specific & Analytical:
Q. What is a "regression platform"?
Q. How do you estimate? What kind of estimation practices do you follow?
Q. Your project team does not have hierarchy. You have couple of good techies in your project that has same skills and experience. There is a conflict between two of them. Both are good technically and very important to the project. How do you handle conflict between them?
Q. You are starting a new project, which includes offshore/onsite development. How do you manage communications?
Q. Your company is expert in providing solutions for a particular domain. You are appointed as a project manager for a new project. You have to do Risk management. What will be your approach?
Q. You have a resource who is not happy with his job and complains all the time. You have noticed that because of that the team morale is getting spoiled. How do you handle that resource?
Q. Your team is into the 6th Iteration of 8 Iteration project. It's been really hectic for the team for the last couple of months as this project is very important for your customer and to your company. You have started noticing that some of your key resources are getting burnt out. How do you motivate these resources?
Q. There was a situation where there was more than one-way to accomplish the same task. Your onsite tech lead and offshore tech lead has different opinions about doing this and the feelings were very strong. Both are very important to you. How do you react to this?
Q. What are the practices you follow for project close out? Assume you are into a product customization for a customer and the application has gone live. How do you close this project?
Q. What is velocity? How do you estimate your team's velocity?
Q. What is earned value management? Why do you need it?
Q. Describe the type of manager you prefer.
Q. What are your team-player qualities? Give examples.
Q. How do you prioritize your tasks when there isn't time to complete them all?
Q. How do you stay focused when faced with a major deadline?
Q. Are you able to cope with more than one job at a time?
Q. In your opinion, why do software projects fail?
Q. For some reasons you've encountered a delay on an early phase of your project. What actions can you take to counter the delay?
Q. What is Function point analysis? Why do you need it?
Q. What is the difference between EO and EQ? What is FTR?
Q. You are estimating using Function point analysis for a distributed n-tier application. How do you factor the complexity for distributed n-tier application? Does FP Provides support for it?
Q. You are getting Adjusted Function point count. How do you convert it into Effort?

- DeTimes