What is Behaviour Based Interviewing?
BBI focusses on experiences, behaviours, knowledge, skills and abilities that are job related. It is based on the belief that past behaviour and performance predicts future behaviour and performance. You may use work experience, activities, hobbies, volunteer work, school projects, family life etc - as examples of your past behaviour.
Current employment literature indicates that there is a strong trend towards this type of interviewing. In addition to questions found in many current resources, you should also consider the following in your interview preparations.
What Do Employers Evaluate in A Behavioural Interview?
Employers are looking for 3 types of skills:
· Content Skills
· Functional Skills - also called Transferable Skills
· Adaptive Skills - also called Self-Management Skills.
Content Skills -- Knowledge that is work-specific such as computer programming, accounting, welding, etc. expressed as nouns.
Functional or Transferable Skills -- Used with people, information or things… such as organising, managing, developing, communicating, etc. expressed as verbs.
Adaptive or Self-Management Skills -- personal characteristics such as dependable, team player, self directed, punctual, etc. expressed as adjectives.
How Can I Best Answer Behaviour-Based Questions?
Think of "PAR for the Course". A complete answer to a behaviour-based question must explain the task or problem for which you were responsible, the specific action you took, and the results of your actions. Your answer must contain all of these components to be a PAR answer. Tell the interviewer a "story" (with a beginning, a middle, and an end) about how you used a practical skill.
- Problem (P) -- Advertising revenue was falling off for the Daily News and large numbers of long-term advertisers were not renewing contracts.
- Action (A) -- I designed a new promotional package to go with the rate-card and compared the benefits of Daily News circulation with other ad media in the area. I also set-up a special training session for the account executives with a sales-training company who discussed competitive selling strategies.
- Result (R) -- We signed contracts with fifteen former advertisers for daily ads and five for special supplements. We increased our new advertisers by twenty percent (quantities are always good) over the same period last year.
How Can I Prepare for A Behavioural Interview?
- Analyze the type of positions for which you are applying.
Try to get an actual job description. What skills are required by employers? What are the responsibilities? What are the challenges?
Complete a “Technical Skills Matrix” to make it easier for both the recruitment agency and the prospective employer to really judge what you can do, as distinct from what you might have covered in theory.
Use a consistent scale e.g. 0-5 to rate your skill level.
- Analyse your own background. What skills do you have (content, functional, and adaptive) that relate to your job objective?
- Identify examples from your past experience where you demonstrated those skills. How can you “tell a story” about your use of particular skills or knowledge?
Concentrate on developing complete PAR answers and remember that a good story has a beginning, middle and end.
- Wherever possible, quantify your results. Numbers illustrate your level of authority, responsibility and influence.
- Be prepared to provide examples of when results didn’t turn out as you planned. What did you do then?
- Before starting the interview process, identify 2 to 3 of your top selling points and determine how you will convey these points (with demonstrated PAR stories) during the interview.
- Once employed, keep a personal achievement diary to help document demonstrated performance (PAR stories).
