Behavioral questions are a common and effective way to assess a candidate's past performance, skills, and fit for a role. However, not all behavioral questions are created equal. Some can be vague, leading, or irrelevant, resulting in poor or biased answers. How can you avoid asking bad behavioral questions and improve your interviewing skills? Here are some tips to help you.
The STAR method is a simple framework to help you structure your behavioral questions and evaluate the responses. It stands for Situation, Task, Action, and Result. You want to ask questions that prompt the candidate to describe a specific situation they faced, the task they had to accomplish, the action they took, and the result they achieved. This way, you can get concrete and relevant examples of their behavior, rather than general or hypothetical statements.
Yes or no questions are not very helpful for behavioral interviews, as they do not elicit enough information or insight into the candidate's behavior. For example, asking "Have you ever dealt with a difficult customer?" does not tell you much about how the candidate handled the situation, what skills they used, or what outcome they achieved. Instead, ask open-ended questions that start with how, what, when, where, or why, such as "How did you handle a situation where a customer was unhappy with your service?"
Behavioral questions should be aligned with the most important skills and competencies for the role you are hiring for. You do not want to waste time asking questions that are irrelevant or too broad for the position. For example, if you are hiring for a software engineer, you might want to ask questions that test their technical skills, problem-solving abilities, and teamwork. You do not need to ask them about their sales skills or their creativity. To identify the most important skills, review the job description, consult with the hiring manager, and use a competency framework.
A melhor forma para descobrir se as competências técnicas ou comportamentais de um candidato est?o alinhadas à uma posi??o é realizar perguntas onde se pode mapear tais competências! Parece simples, mas na verdade n?o é, para tal é necessário primeiramente conhecer muito bem a descri??o da vaga e a descri??o do negócio, o recrutador precisa conhecer as demandas fundamentais do cargo e o comportamento que se é esperado para aquela posi??o. Depois, elaborar as perguntas que possam trazer essas competências à tona! Embora muitos achem que é responsabilidade do candidato demonstrar todo seu potencial em uma entrevista de emprego, o recrutadoro responsável por fazer as perguntas certas e permitir que esse potencial apare?a.
One of the challenges of behavioral interviews is to ensure that you are consistent and fair in your questions and evaluation. You want to avoid any bias or discrimination that might affect your judgment or the candidate's experience. To do this, you should prepare a list of behavioral questions in advance and use the same questions for all candidates applying for the same role. You should also use a rating scale or a rubric to score the responses objectively and compare them across candidates.
Please don't "wing" your interview questions! Going in with a set list of questions for the role will help you consistently compare and evaluate responses. If you are the hiring manager, consider providing other members of the interview team with a set list of questions as well, hopefully ones that vary from your own. If you do this, your interview process will be a more interactive candidate experience and also ensure that you are being fair in your hiring process.
The best way to avoid asking bad behavioral questions is to ask for feedback and improve your skills. You can ask for feedback from your colleagues, your hiring manager, or the candidates themselves. You can also review your own performance by recording or reviewing your interviews and identifying your strengths and weaknesses. By asking for feedback and improving your skills, you can ensure that you are asking effective and relevant behavioral questions that help you hire the best talent.
Provide candidates with some space to answer your behavioral-based questions, it can take a moment to recall and have a thoughtful response. In addition to job skills, you can also ask questions that will indicate if they will be a good culture fit for your team as well.