Behavioral Interviewing

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Behavioral Interviewing

• A behavioral answer is always the best interview
  answer
• Randy Guthrie, PhDMicrosoft Research

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Interview Preparation

• Me in 30 Seconds Statement
• Answers the question Tell me about yourself
• Demonstrates most critical behaviors or
  experience
• Uses a work-related experience to demonstrate
  behavior
• Does not mention interests, experiences or
  behaviors not related to job
• Do not mention family, hobbies, personal
  situations
• Prepare 2 or 3 of these
• Practice saying them to friends family
• DO NOT EXCEED 30 SECONDS!

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Sample Me in 30 Seconds

• Behavior passion for technology
• Ive always loved computers. I built my first
  from-scratch computer in 9th grade , and I
  starting writing C programs using MatLab to help
  with my math homework when I was in 10th grade.
  I earned some of the money for college by
  creating web sites for local businesses. I
  believe that information technology can change
  the world, and I want to be the person at the
  cutting edge doing it

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Behavioral Interviews

• Used by many large companies
• Used by almost all consulting firms
• Assumes your past behaviors predict your future
  behaviors
• Consist of questions about past challenging
  situations you have faced
• Ive never faced that is a wrong answer
• Do an Internet search on Behavioral Interview
  for detailed (essential!) information

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Sample Behavioral Questions

• Tell me about a time when you had to deal with an
  angry customer
• Tell me about a time when you had to tell your
  manager she was wrong
• Tell me about a time when you had to make a
  sacrifice to make a commitment
• Tell me about a time when you had to deal with
  personality conflicts on a team
• Tell me about a difficult decision you had to
  make this past year

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The SAR or STAR Approach

• Situation/Task describe situation or assignment
• Must be a specific (real) event, not hypothetical
• Give just enough detail so the interviewer
  understands the situation
• 15-20 seconds in length
• Action describe the action YOU took personally
  (dont say what the team did)
• Results describe the positive outcomes
  (including lessons-learned) from your actions

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• Situation I was asked to join a team that that
  had been trying to build a software system for
  two years with little success
• Action I discovered that they did not have a
  specification or plan. I wrote a draft
  specification and insisted that we ratify or
  modify it and agree to it.
• Result We finished the system within 90 days of
  my joining the team. I was asked to be the
  project manager for the next version

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Preparation

• Think of 20 or 30 plausible / likely behavioral
  interview questions you might be asked
• Think of jobs, internship, club service
• Try to avoid family spiritual service examples
• often do not generalize to work situations
• Write out a SAR answer for each question
• Practice giving the answers to family / friends
• Note you can often use the same situation for
  different questions depending on how you spin it
  ie teams problems can be spun as a sacrifice to
  reach goals

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Behavioral Answers are Best

• When asked a non-behavioral question, answer with
  behavioral answer
• Example
• Q What would you do if..
• A I had a situation like that. Here is what
  happened

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Resume as Interview Agenda

• Resume focused on accomplishments will likely
  drive interviewer to ask questions that you have
  prepared answers for

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Conclusion

• Interview is focused conversation that YOU the
  interviewee have a great deal of control over
  what is asked and how it goes
• If your resume is written to focus on
  accomplishments
• You are well prepared
• Think rehearsal

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• http//blogs.msdn.com/MIS_Laboratory