Behavioral interviewing is a great way to get beyond the usual Q & A of an interview and will give you some real insight into who the person you are interviewing really is. Standard questions only get you so far, and everyone can seem great on paper. It’s not until you dig deeper that you start to get an idea of the personality traits and characteristics that will make a potential new hire the right person for the job.
There are several different types of behavioral questions that you can ask. Some can lean towards the absurd, while others are centered around specific situations and how people handle things. One great behavioral question you can ask should be inspired by actual events in your company, or events in the candidate’s past.
As an example, you could take a recent crisis your company handled or a common situation that crops up and ask the candidate to supply you with an answer on what they would have done. This gives you the benefit of seeing if their responses are in line with your practices and how they would do in your organization.
Or, you can ask them for specifics on something they’ve dealt with in the past. Both should give you a very good idea of who your candidate really is and how well they’d fit in your organization.
For the engineering candidate, learning how to answer these questions is equally important. This is your chance to shine and be a candidate of choice! Although you’ll need to come up with your own response to these questions, the way that you structure your response has a lot of meaning.
People, in general, respond very well to story-telling. It intrigues them and keeps them interested. Instead of flat, boring, quick answers, develop a style of actually telling them how you did something. For example, if you are asked how you handled a specific challenge at work, you can start by first setting the tone.
What was the challenge involving? Why was it so challenging? Set the scene and get the interviewer really interested in what was going on. Describe your reactions to the problem and the steps you took to fix it. Don’t stop there, though! Keep going! What good is a story if it doesn’t have a happy ending? Make sure you finish up with what happened as a result of your influence.
One tip – resist the urge to over-embellish! It can be all too easy to get caught up in your own story-telling flare. Keep it interesting, but don’t go over the top.
Need assistance finding the perfect job so you can try out your own answers to behavioral interviewing questions? The experts at Solopoint Solutions are here to help!