Interviewing and answering behavioral questions. Sounds a lot easier than it is, doesn’t it? Talking about your past experiences … can’t be that hard right? Then why do we generally get so nervous?
Overall, interviewing can seem daunting, but only if you set your mind to think that! Imagine this, every interviewer wants to see you succeed and is hoping that you’ll be the hire, you only now have to show them what you got.
Interviews are meetings where we get the opportunity to speak on our experiences, build rapport, and exhibit why we should be hired onto this next role. And although we know ourselves better than most people do, especially more than this interviewer does, it does take practice to know how to advocate for ourselves.
I’ll cover the basics of behavioral questions, explain the structure of how the response should be, and provide examples of how to thoughtfully and thoroughly answer some common behavioral questions you might get in an interview.
What are behavioral questions?
Behavioral questions are questions that are focused on your past experiences and employers ask behavioral questions to get insight on how you have solved problems in the past.
Anticipate your questions
Most behavioral questions will be tailored to the role you are interviewing for. For example, if you are interviewing for a sales position you might get a question like, “Tell me about a time when you successfully closed a sales deal”. If you’re interviewing for a customer service role, you might get “Tell me about a time when you handled a difficult customer conversation.”
Behavioral questions can also be very general, such as “tell me about your greatest accomplishment” or “tell me about a time where you made significant impact in your role”.
So unless you’re psychic, you can’t know exactly what questions will be asked but you can most of the time anticipate some general questions you might get depending on the role you’re interviewing for. Hint: take a look at the job description, look at what the responsibilities are and write down 4-5 questions you might get.
The STARR method
The STAR method is a very commonly used method to answering behavioral questions and it works. A little secret I like to tell my candidates is about the extra R. Read along –
S: Situation || When you’re starting your response, paint the picture to your interviewer of the situation. Was this your previous company, which role was it, when was this? Were you working on a project, were you training for a new role? Set the tone, describe the situation.
T: Task || What was the task? Did you have a deadline? What goal were you given? Did you have a quota you had to hit? What tools or resources did you utilize?
A: Action || What action(s) did you take? How did you know what action(s) to take? Make it concise to the interviewer and if possible, break it down into steps if possible.
R: Result || What was the result of the situation? Was it a positive result, what was the outcome. Provide data points, metrics, and percentages if applicable.
R*: Reflection || The reflection piece! Looking back at this moment, would there have been anything different you would have done? If you were provided any additional resources, would it have resulted in a different outcome? How will you take this experience and apply it to the role you’re interviewing for?
Using data, make it concise, and easy to understand
When possible, incorporate data in your response (example below). Be concise and provide the useful information. You want to be mindful of the interview time and be able to go through all of the questions that they prepared. Avoid jargon, abbreviation, and terms that might have only made sense in your previous company. If you can repeat these responses to a friend or family member, and they have absolutely no idea what you’re referring to, you might want to do a retake on your response.
Practice can make it perfect
I am a huge advocate of practice and practicing it out loud. Using the questions that you might anticipate in an interview, write it down on a piece of paper or type up your response. Does it explain the situation, break down the task and actions, do you have the result and are you able to reflect? The more you take to memorize these responses, the easier they will flow in your response. Again, practice it out loud – it’s one thing to read and memorize, another to verbalize it and make it flow more naturally.
Bonus tip: do a quick Google search on common behavioral questions you might expect in the role you’re interviewing for. And try to answer all the questions you see. Because .. you guessed it – practice can make it perfect. And it will help with the nerves!
