In our last post, we discussed researching your organization as the first step to conquering your job interview. The next step is to give confident, powerful, and meaningful answers to the interviewer’s questions. Utilizing a simple technique to answer behavioral interview questions will do just that.
Tip #2 – Giving Highly Effective Answers
Behavioral-based interviewing, also known as competency-based interviewing, has been gaining popularity for the past few decades. It allows you to demonstrate your abilities by relating a situation in your past, what you did to resolve it, and what the result was. Interviewers that conduct behavioral interviewing are trying to determine a pattern of the candidate’s problem-solving skills that are considered successful markers for the available position.
Here is an example of a mediocre response to a behavioral interview question.
Interviewer: In this role, you would be managing a team of people in your department. What is your philosophy about reprimanding people who aren’t performing up to standards?
Candidate #2: In a situation like that, I would bring the person into my office, sit them down behind closed doors, and tell them what the problem is. We would then try to determine the cause of the problem, and find solutions to the problem so the employee can improve.
What was the problem with that answer? It seemed reasonable, right? While the candidate outlined how he/she would have acted in a particular situation, the response didn’t provide the interviewer with any sense that the candidate would be able to apply those principles to a real life situation. Essentially, the candidate missed the opportunity to “prove it” to the interviewer.
Behavioral interviewing emphasizes past performance and actions. You should be prepared with some anecdotes from your life or career that illustrate your skill sets, including:
- Leadership
- Motivation
- Communication & interpersonal communication skills
- Planning & organization
- Handling stress & difficult situations
- Team building
- Critical thinking
The best process for answering behavioral interviewing question is 3-step technique called SAR – Situation, Action, Result. Your response should include a few sentences in each category: describe the situation, relate the action you took, and state the result of your actions. Keep your SAR response succinct; avoid rambling. Make distinct transitions between the three categories.
Here is the same behavioral interview question with a response that utilizes the SAR technique.
Interviewer: In this role, you would be managing a team of people in your department. What is your philosophy about reprimanding people who aren’t performing up to standards?
Candidate #2: That question can be illustrated by a similar situation that happened at my current job. Our monthly productivity reports showed that one employee was producing at about half the level of the rest of the team. I talked to the employee in the privacy of my office about the report, and asked him what he thought the issue was. He said that he was really struggling with the new software, and was too embarrassed to say anything about it. It turns out he missed the two-day training seminar because he was out sick. We send him to the next available software training course that happened to be scheduled at our office in Medford only a few days later. By the next productivity report, his numbers were right on track with the rest of the group.
The SAR response is superior because it demonstrates how you handled the situation and how you made it a success for you, your coworkers, and your organization. Interviewers love this kind of response because they want to hire winners who will help their organization be successful. Nothing is a better indicator of that than your past performance.
The next tip will address the dreaded interview question – “What is your greatest weakness?”
