Behavioral Interview
Interviewing is an art and facing an interview with ease is also considered an art to be mastered. With the world getting more competitive day by day employers are finding new ways to filter out candidates appearing for interviews. Behavioral interviewing is a relatively new method employed in the industry where it is based on the fact that the most precise predictor of the future performance is performance of a similar situation in the past. This article will dig out the intricacies involved in this kind of interviewing and bring out the best interview tips to cut through the interview.
What exactly do they test you for?
These kind of interviews go beyond the traditional interviewing questions where you are asked straight forward questions which are easily predictable. They are competency based and are very specific. For instance questions like “How would you react when you meet XYZ person of a company” or “tell me from your past experiences how and when you overcame a crisis, tackled a problem, dealt with a failure etc.
Now if we look at the traditional questions it would be something like “what would you do in such a situation”. Looking at this carefully we see that in this question asked here there we don’t have to recall upon any past experiences of ours. You just have to merely put in some thought and imagination to tackle this question. But this kind of interviewing technique can be easily cracked.
Now if we take the behavioral interviewing, we see that we count upon past experiences and determine on the candidates success. The interviewer structures the questions in such a way that they are very specific and are aimed at checking if the job seeker possess those qualities.
How to tackle these Questions???.
As a candidate you should do some homework before you attend an interview. Candidates must prepare some sort of short stories that they can tell. The stories should concentrate on some specific areas such as interviewer looks out for content skills, functional skills, managerial skills or self management skills, team work, creativity. Your real life experiences should revolve around these qualities. It is always not that you are tested for these qualities in your behavioral interview but nevertheless these are some areas to be concentrated upon.
Now, every story you come up with should have some standard format to it. They should always be a three piece. Firstly, it should have an amazing beginning. You should lay the platform and set the stage and you can do this by thoroughly describing the situation and time. Secondly, the middle part which we call it the process. Here you have to describe how you have took up action and how you have enforced your plan to tackle that situation. Thirdly, the Resolution is what you should end your story. The thing thing to be said here is how finally the problem was resolved and top it off with a perfect ending.
Your story should be filled up with facts and some action sequences which will keep the interviewer engrossed in the story. Your story finally should reflect your personality and talk about you. Ultimately the sole purpose of the whole story telling is getting through the interview.
Conclusion.
Before you attend the interview hone and sharpen your stories and skills to the core and be well prepared for the interview. And always remember have some stories in your mind which support whatever you have put up in your Resume.