All you need to know about the Behavioral Interview

The Interview

Interview is a conversation between the job provider "Interviewer" and the job seeker "interviewee". The objective of the conversation is to gauge the interviewee's skillset and knowledge for specific job being offered by the interviewer. Mostly, the job description that details the requirements guides the interviewer and the interviewee during the interview conversation.

Traditional interview - Traditional style of interview prevailed ever since the interview process started. Traditional style of interview is subjective where the interview is focused on assessing what you know, learnt through experience or academics. Hence, it is relatively easy to get prepared for the interview as the job description suggests what to expect in the interview. For example - What is the formula for ABC, what is the journal entry for XYZ.

Behavioral interview - Behavioral interviews are modern interview techniques, they are objective. Job descriptions provides very little guidance on what to expect in the interview. Behavioral interviews are more focused on how you are likely to respond to a situation, this is assessed basis your response to the interviewer's questions related to your past experience. For example: Tell me about a scenario when you had to do ABC, what was your approach, why did you specifically managed the task that way, knowing what you know, would you do it differently?

How to prepare for the behavioral interview

Traditional style of interview is largely structured but behavioral interviews can be unstructured and tricky. All the internet technology companies such as, Google, Amazon, Facebook, LinkedIn etc., follow behavioral interview approach. These companies paved the way to new kind of work that is dynamic and rapidly changing in nature. Hence, these fast moving or rapid changing companies, expect the candidates also to be agile in their thought process and approach because that is the only way a candidate will be successful in the dynamic environment of these companies.

7 How's to prepare for behavioral interview

Before preparing for any Behavioral interview, it is important to understand your own self. The only way to do so is by reflecting on your past experiences. While the rest of the pages guides you on how to prepare for behavior interview, follow steps can help you kickstart the process of preparation:

1. Write a summary of your experience, cover all aspects you know or can talk about in the interview

2. List down the activities you have done in the past, try and recollect even the minutest thing you have done in your previous jobs or in college, if you are a fresher

3. Once you have the list of activities, elaborate against each activity, such as, what was the activity, what was it done, what would have happened if you had not done it and so on

4. Now pick up any behavioral interview question and try to build an answer by using the STAR answers format

5. Read your answers multiple times and keep correcting them to add more value added responses

6. Record your answers and listen to them as you are listening to responses of an interviewee. Highlight areas where you would want to ask a question if you were an interviewer.

7. For each instance, create a set of probing questions and prepare answers for those probing questions

The easiest way is to thoroughly read each page of this website, use the STAR framework recommended and incorporate the value added answers section in your answers. All the best for your behavioral interview!