In today’s job market, it’s critical for employers to find the perfect fit of candidates. Besides helping organizations rely on their new members in the short term, hiring the right applicants can also spell out success in the long term.
Behavioral interviewing is a widespread candidate assessment tool that has seen a great increase in its popularity over the years. This form of interview analyzes candidates’ behaviors in different situations in the past while determining how these behaviors helped them as helpful skills.
But exactly how do you prepare for conducting a behavioral interview? The following tips can answer that important question for you!
Use the STAR Method
The STAR method in behavioral interviewing includes situation, task, action, and result. It sets up a situation for the question, the task the applicant was handed, and the action. Finally, it looks at the result that the candidate achieved. You can write down your interview questions that follow this method and let your candidate answer them the same way. This can help you find dream candidates and allow candidates to find their dream job.
Categorize Questions According to the Role
While performing behavioral interviewing can help you find the ideal candidates in a variety of departments, there are some positions where certain behavioral questions might be more suitable than others. For example, if you are hiring for a financial position, you might want to ask questions about situations where the candidate identified misreported numbers and took actions to rectify them. You can think of it as performing a criminal background check only for certain positions.
Score Candidates Based on Answers
While the STAR method can help you discover the perfect match of applicants across different categories, sometimes it becomes difficult to pick one person for a position when others have also performed well in their interview. That’s where a scorecard comes into the picture and helps you assess candidates with an objective outlook. Similar to a scorecard platform for leads, you can find a solution that addresses your recruitment needs. This can make your behavioral interviewing more successful.
Calibrate Your Approach With Other Team Members
Team calibration can work like a charm for a lot of processes. This also holds true for behavioral interviewing. Besides figuring out a standard for your STAR method, this can also help you discuss with your team how you score a candidate based on their answers. When you compare approaches openly, you can establish a set level of candidate assessment. This leads to more accurate interviewing techniques and might help job applicants unlock their true potential.
Make a List of Questions Beforehand
While calibrating your approach with the rest of your recruitment team, you can also make a standardized list of questions for different positions. This makes sure that no matter who is available to interview the next applicant, they can ask high-quality questions that everyone agrees can assess the candidate in the best way. If your recruitment portal doesn’t allow for these techniques at the time, you can use solutions like a form-building app.
Don’t Limit Your Questions to Job Performance
It can be a no-brainer to ask performance-related questions as a part of your behavioral interviewing techniques. But if you focus on these questions too much, you may leave out the candidates’ assessment of being a good cultural fit for the company. That’s why it’s important that you make cultural questions like the candidate’s past experience with cultural problems a part of the interview. This can help you with various challenges, like designing remote employee experiences.
Use Effective Probing During the Interview
For performance-related questions, many candidates have their responses ready beforehand. For cultural or creative questions, they may have to think of answers on the spot. But for every question, you should be prepared to do effective probing to determine why the candidate thinks specific actions were required in the past and if they expected a different result from them. Whether you are using video interview software or conducting face-to-face interviews, this approach can work wonders for your goals.
By going through these behavioral interviewing tips, you can find top candidates in your required fields. This could help you build a stellar team that takes your organization to the next level.
