Behavioral Interviews

Behavioral interviews are, to me, the most difficult interviews (other than stress interviews). As an interviewer, I love behavioral interviews because the best indicator of future behavior is your past behavior. However, as an interviewee - I hate behavioral interviews because I tend to think in a big picture and don't obsess with little situations.

For example, I was recently asked "tell me about a time when you did not meet a deadline". My response, after a bit of pondering was "I have never missed a deadline - my projects are usually publicized and I don't have the opportunity to miss a deadline".

My personal bias is...I want to hire people who meet deadlines, therefore this should have been a great response in my mind. Former military people sometimes answer "failure is not an option" - another response I love and value. HOWEVER....these two answers are not "winning" answers. Why? They make the speaker look cocky, arrogant or too perfect. So what to do?????

Think smaller - to a specific time when you missed a deadline - such as submitting a report or having to put aside a smaller task to meet a more important task's deadline that was maybe given to you at the last moment.

When answering behavioral questions, remember the acronym S.T.A.R.

Star - briefly give the situation or scenario
Task - briefly state your tasks
Action - tell what actions you took
Result - and state the end result.

From the above example "tell me about a time when you missed a deadline" a good response would have been: "Recently I turned in a weekly report late. I was asked to do a special project which was due on the same date - the last day before vacation started. Since I was not allowed to work overtime, the weekly report had to wait and be turned in when I returned from vacation. Although the report was late, I turned it in within the first hour of reporting back to work and since there was a holiday involved, nobody was negatively impacted because they too, were on vacation.".

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