A professional job interview is a mixed bag of assessing tools that include aptitude tests and various kinds of questions that help the interviewer evaluate a candidate’s skills. Apart from the HR interview and the aptitude tests, a job interview can also include behavioural questions. Behavioural interviews or questions are those tests that have been introduced to gauge the competence and character traits of the candidates. These interviews were added to the recruitment process so that the employers can understand the logic, problem solving and analysis skills of a prospective employee. Behavioural interview provides an opportunity to the prospective employer to learn about the past behaviour of the candidate which can help anticipate his/her future performance and behaviour. These questions often come as a surprise and your unpreparedness might lead to poor performance thereby providing an incompetent picture of your career to the employer. Mentioned below are some tips you would need in order to answer the behavioural interview questions efficiently!
Tips To Answer Behavioural Interview Questions
-
The key to success in anything you do is preparation. Therefore, in order to be able to tackle the behavioural interview questions, you must research the various behavioural questions that can be asked in such interviews. Internet or books on behavioural interviews can provide you with the basic questions that are generally posed in such interviews.
-
Once you have enough knowledge on the types of behavioural questions that can be posed to you, it is time for you to review your resume. Go through your resume thoroughly and recall the situations from the past that match any of the behavioural questions. It is advisable to recall all such situations and prepare a convincing answer before facing the interviewer.
-
Another way to prepare for the behavioural interview questions is to pen down the answers of all the popular questions. Make use of the situations from your resume as well and prepare your answers with examples related to the applied job.
-
Being specific and precise can also work in your favour when it comes to answering a behavioural interview question. Make sure that the examples you present are specific and to the point. Narrate situations that are relevant to the question and not a detailed history of other happenings.
Three Step Process Of Answering
STAR is a three step technique that is suggested by experts in order to successfully tackle the behavioural interview questions. STAR stands for;
Situation Or Task
The first key to answering a behavioural question is to narrate a small situation or incident that shows your involvement as a leader. Based on the question, recall and narrate a specific, challenging and work related situation that you resolved. Make sure that you don’t lose much time in describing the problem. Make the narration of the problem brief, without compromising on the comprehensibility of the situation.
Action
Once you have put across a situation or an incident relating to the question posed, describe, in detail, the positive action that you took. The situation displays the kind of problem you faced and hence speaks about the kind of exposure you’ve got while the action you took to come out of that problem is important because it speaks volumes about your presence of mind and decision making skills. This is the focus of your answer and therefore, you need to provide the employer with details of both the problem you faced and the action you took.
Result
After the problem and the action, it is time for the result to be narrated. Every situation has an outcome and therefore, the prospective employer would be expecting a positive outcome from your actions as well. Describing a positive result that came out of the decision you took shows that your actions were appropriate.
Job interviews are competitive and challenging and put the candidate’s skills, knowledge and experience to test. There are various questions that are asked in an interview – while some aim at checking your knowledge, others like the behavioural ones aim at gauging your character. And, how to answer such interview questions is a common doubt prevalent among almost candidates today. This article seeks to provide you with all possible clarifications.
