Companies want to eliminate the expense of bad hires — it costs a small fortune to make a hiring mistake. That’s why the interviewing process in each employer is constantly under scrutiny. Most of the changes in a company’s interviewing style begin in the Human Resources department, and then get filtered down into the company where the new methods become standard. For example, a decade or two ago, someone in H/R developed an interview based upon their belief that “past behaviors predict future performance.” That style is now quite commonplace, and is known as the “behavioral” style of interviewing.

In this issue’s column, I will dissect this interview process, which has been designed to avoid as much as possible the canned responses that are so prevalent when candidates are asked more traditional interview questions. In fact, it’s so hard to develop responses in advance that they are often considered impossible to prepare for.

Even if you haven’t yet experienced a behavioral interview, I can assure you that someday soon you will sit across from an interviewer who wants to know more about your actions with certain people and events than she does about your science interests or your last project. Once again, good science will not win the day. Your responses to tough interviewing situations will!

Today’s Tough Interviews
While old-school managers may still ask the old standby, “Where would you like to be in five years?”, it is most often a different type of question that will come up. These new questions take the concept of “open-ended” vs. “closed-ended” questions to the furthest extreme.

Even the greenest supervisor will know better than to ask a series of closed-ended questions. Those are the kind that can be answered with a simple “yes” or “no,” or something that is equally abrupt. (For example, “Do you enjoy your job as a QA Supervisor?” or “How many years have you been practicing QA?”).

Instead, this behavioral interviewer will ask more and more detail of you, until you are concerned that they are pushing you to discomfort. They’ll ask you about a scenario, and then fine-tune with “What did you do next?” or “How did you feel at the time about your exchange with that person?” The goal is, like peeling away the layers of an onion, to go further and further into the questioning until the real you begins to show.

How Scientists Typically Deal With Behavioral Questions
“I was totally baffled by the interviewer’s seemingly strong interest in my relationship with the difficult people in my life,” the senior scientist told me. “I had been prepared to answer any question that she wanted to ask about my research work, and the technical challenges that I had overcome in getting to this point in my life.”

I remember this conversation so clearly, because this wasn’t a bad candidate — in fact, this guy was a great fit for my client. But he was totally tripped up by the behavioral interview. I asked him whether or not he had expected questions about him or whether he had been expecting only technical questions.

“Of course, I was not so naive as to expect an interview that was totally focused on my science. I’d done a lot of personal introspection into the ways that I can assist them. I was ready to do a little selling on my own behalf. But these questions really threw me off track. Basically, I was just floored that there was nothing there that I could take and run with — it was all touchy-feely.” He went on to detail many of the questions that he had been asked. (Some of these are below).

Let’s face it, your entire education has focused you on developing, maintaining, and improving upon a set of technical qualifications. Your employer is most happy when you are using those technical skills and “sharpening the saw.” That’s why it is frustrating indeed to find that these matters are not as important in getting a job as you had thought they would be. Here’s what one H/R manager told me about these types of interviews:

“There is so much technical talent available, and we use so many sources to find those applicants, that what really matters when we see them is that we know who’s promotable. It will then be up to our interviewers to determine which of these candidates fits best technically, or who fits our company culture. That’s why I’ll ask very specific questions about behaviors.”

How specific is this? Take a look at the common list of behavioral questions that follow.

A Variety of Behavioral Questions

• Tell me about the most difficult person you’ve ever worked with? What made that person so difficult? How did you deal with it? Tell me about a specific situation you encountered with that (former boss, former workmate, etc) and how you handled it?
• Give me an instance where you used your problem solving skills to resolve a problem with your co-workers.
• Describe an error that you had made that adversely affected the team and how you handled that situation.
• Give me two examples of personal conflicts on the job and how you handled them. Is there a certain type of person with whom you consistently don’t get along well?
• Describe two people whom you like and respect. What do you like about them? Describe two people whom you have trouble dealing with. Why is this?
• What makes you feel content at the end of a typical day? Tell me about a time when you were in your comfort zone and then got rudely shocked out of it by circumstances or by people on the job. How did you handle this?
• What excites you the most about your work? Give me an example of a time when you were at your highest level of excitement about your work — your greatest moment.
• Are you an independent decision-maker? Give me an example of a time when you made a decision that had to be defended and how did you proceed?
• Are you a ‘Team Player’? Describe a project team in which you played a key role.

How To Be Prepared For and Deal With Behavioral Questions
It is clear by the list of questions above that the company wants to know as much as possible about the “real you.”
Reading books about these tough interview questions and then spouting off prepared answers (someone else’s prepared answers) is not the way to succeed. While in some cases a “textbook interviewer” will get the job, it is usually not to their advantage to have talked their way past the guardian of the company culture. Somewhere shortly down the road it will be obvious that a mismatch has occurred.

The best way to answer these questions is to be aware that they are coming, and then to do some self-analysis in advance that will assist you in showing pieces of the real you. What kind of self-analysis? As you can tell by the examples above, these are questions that deal with your responses to people. Think long and hard about the folks you have worked with and the interactions you’ve had, both good and bad. Be prepared in your meetings to discuss what you like and what you dislike about various types of people — all the while remembering that companies are looking for a person with flexibility in this department.

In the behavioral interview, the process of cramming doesn’t make any sense. But while you really can’t adequately
prepare for these interviews, you can remember a formula that I have always found to be helpful. Remember the acronym S-T-A-R, which stands for Situation-Task-Action-Result. Be prepared to describe the situation you were in (or the problem you faced), the task that you were asked to accomplish, what action you took, and then what the result was. If you get all four pieces in, there is a strong likelihood that the interviewer will not go further. 

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David G. Jensen is Managing Director of Kincannon & Reed Executive Search (www.krsearch.com), a leading retained search firm in the biosciences. You can reach Dave at (928) 274-2266 or via djensen@krsearch.net.