Behavioral Interview Questions

Behavioral Interview Questions

There are many skill areas from which Behavioral Interview Questions can be made from.  Ideally, you want to try to get a broad working list focusing on what you believe are the 20 most important for that specific job and create examples for each.  One caveat: there will be some overlap for a number of the skills so it is a good idea to do your homework before in such a way that you have examples for all of them.  This will help decrease the chance in the interview that you will need to use examples in several areas.  Since you do not know exactly what questions and how many behavioral interview questions will be asked, you will have to make a best guess in this area and may even need to make a judgment call during the interview on which examples you should give.  Recognize that you may not be able to fire off all your best examples; however, you do want to make sure you are getting out at least the lion’s share of them.  We have put together a list of common skill set questions.  These are designed to get you thinking about the kinds of questions that can be asked and to start filling out your examples.

1. Initiative
2. 1. Describe a situation where you took initiative to solve a problem.
3. Customer Service Based
4. 1. Give me an example of where you failed to provide quality customer service.
5. Results Based
6. 1. Tell me about a time you completed a major project.
7. Organizational skills
8. 1. Give me an example of when you used your organization skills in leading a major project to completion.
9. Analytical Skills
10. 1. Tell me about a time you had to do analysis on a complex project.
    2. Give me an example of when your logic was flawed on a project.
11. Research Skills
12. 1. Describe a time you researched a project with a tight deadline.
13. Ethics
14. 1. Describe a situation where you did not feel comfortable with an action taken by your manager.
15. Interpersonal Skills
16. 1. Tell me about a time you had a problem with a co-worker and how you went about addressing it.
17. Verbal Communication Skills
18. 1. Tell me about a time you used your communication skills to resolve a difficult issue with your team.
19. Written Communication Skills
20. 1. Give me an example of when you had to prepare a lengthy report in a short amount of time.
21. Dealing with Ambiguity
22. 1. Give me an example of where the parameters of an assignment and roles of the project were unclear and what you did to address the situation.
23. Process Improvement
24. 1. Describe a time you led a project to implement a process change.  What were the results of the project?
25. Creativity
26. 1. Tell me about a time you came up with an unconventional solution to a problem.
27. Dealing with Upper Management
28. 1. Describe a time you had to deliver some bad news to upper management.
    2. Give me an example of where you delivered a presentation to upper management.
29. Management Skills
30. 1. Tell me what you have done to make sure your employees feel valued for their hard work.
31. Attention To Detail
32. 1. Describe a time when you found an error in work prior to publishing.
    2. Give an example of when you failed to give the appropriate amount of attention to a task and what was the impact.

Follow-up questions are fair game to all your examples given in Behavioral Interview Questions.  The intent of these questions is to probe further on how much was actually done.  In other words, they want to know if your examples are fluff or full of content.  By choosing and researching your examples beforehand, you should not have too much difficulty with these types of questions.  Typical questions could include:

·        What happened after that?

·        What actions did you take after that event?

·        Was anyone else involved in the planning of the project?

·        What did your manager think?

·        How did you get management’s approval?

·        What exactly did you do during the presentation?

·        What did you take away from that project?

As you can see these questions tend to be from the Who, What, When, Where, How and Why.  To best answer these questions, use the PAR Method: 

1. Problem: State the Problem or Situation
2. Actions Taken: List the Actions Taken to address the Problem.
3. Result: What impact did the actions have on the problem.  What were the results?

This method will give you an opportunity to answer each question systematically and ensure you are providing them will all the basic information.  After you have gone through a few practice sessions with follow-up questions, you should be ready for your next interview.