A behavioral job interview is just a fancy name for
asking you questions about how you have handled
specific kinds of situation in your past. The basis of
the behavioral job interview justification is the
supposition that past behavior predicts future
behavior. Based on this theory, interviewers using the
behavioral job interview method believe that they can
predict your future performance on the job by hearing
about how you handled your past jobs. The way they
execute this is to ask you to tell them about a time
when you faced a particular kind of situation, and
evaluating your response to that situation in light of
their optimal responses.
For instance, in a behavioral job interview, a
candidate might be asked a question like this: “In
every job that deals with the public, you are bound to
encounter a customer who is angry at either you or the
company you work for. Tell me about a time you had to
deal with an angry customer.” It’s worth noting that
the interviewer asked for “a time.” He or she does not
want to hear about your theories, beliefs or trainings
regarding how to deal with angry customers. Nor does
he or she want to hear about how you “usually” handled
angry customers. He or she wants to hear about a
specific incident dealing with a particular customer.
Usually, if you do not begin your story with something
that indicates this, like “I remember one customer” or
the like, he or she will correct you and remind you to
focus on a specific incident.
More Behavioral Job Interview Advice To consider
The behavioral job interview administrator evaluates
your answer based on three elements, and how closely
they match what the company desires. The first element
is the situation that you describe. Clearly, the more
the situation you pick to talk about matches the
situation that you would encounter on the target job,
the more relevant your story. The second element that
the interviewer evaluates is your actions. How closely
do the actions you describe match the optimal actions
that the target job would take under those conditions?
The more you can describe taking similar actions, the
more suitable you are judged to be for the job in
question. The last element is results. In the
behavioral job interview, the more the results you
describe match the results the job desires the more
relevant your experience is judged to be.
In order to use this behavioral job interview style to
your advantage, it is imperative that you discover as
much as you can about the situation, the actions and
the results that the target job will present and
desire. Use that information to choose which stories
you tell and how you describe the events and results
of your actions. The sooner you can find out the
desired situation, actions and results the better,
too. That allows you to prepare a number of potential
examples in advance, and to adjust and alter them to
make them convey the desired impression.
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