So you walk into an interview and you meet a highly energetic/engaged hiring manager or human resources representative. The interviewer goes through the pleasantries, sets you, “the interviewee,” at ease, and begins the questioning. The interviewer looks down at your resume/application and asks the first real question, “So tell me about a time when you had to deal with a difficult person you were working with?” This energetic/engaged interviewer is utilizing “behavioral interviewing.” The interviewer wants you to recount a specific experience demonstrating the behaviors you used to “deal with a difficult person.” How you answer this question will be as important as the content. Here is what I suggest:
1) Context: Tell the interviewer where you worked, your relationship with the individual, and why the person was difficult.
2) SPECIFIC situation: what was the project, work/task, etc., and what did you do (behaviors) in working through the difficulty
3) Results: how did your behaviors benefit the entire team, the difficult individual, and you
So what should you do to prepare:
1) Have the behaviors ready to explain the results on your resume: Take all the results from your resume and put some behavioral stories around them.
2) Be prepared with portfolios, letters of recommendation, or any other artifact that shows your behaviors in action
3) Google Behavioral Interviewing and look at the questions you see – there are many resources out there
4) Practice your stories, practice your stories, practice your stories – most of the situations you encountered in your career show several different behaviors
Whew! You read this post before you encountered a behavioral interviewer. Nothing lost. So the most common comments and the question I get is, “This is great! What do I do for the 80% of interviewers I encounter that are not behavioral interviewers?” Set the foundation and give them behavioral answers! The strength of preparing for a behavioral interview is the answers you would provide better represent you. For example: “So tell me what you did at EXTRA BIG Company, says you were a DBA?”
1) Foundation: Yes, I was a DBA at BIG CO, in which I helped to create and maintain databases with high availability. I liked BIG CO because I got to be proactive. In one example . . .
2) Context: I was monitoring the databases and noticed a higher-than-normal latency during certain hours. So I decided to explore it with some of my colleagues.
3) Specific results: As we looked at the environment, we noticed a program taking 25% more resources than normal. After talking to Michael in the application group, we determined we had a perfect storm problem. At the time, the volume was low, but during our peak season, the system would choke because the transactions would be 250% higher. We raised it to management and got a rewrite.
4) Results: We moved through peak season without incident, and the company saw record transactions. Felt good to know we avoided problems by being curious and proactive.
The “other side” of behavioral interviewing is “behavioral answering.” Use behavioral answering when you don’t have a behavioral interviewer and you will be better represented. Prepare one way that fits both.
Hope this helps!
Until next time.
Dr. Dave