Share A Story To Ace Behavioural Interview Questions

By Justin Mountford

Behavioural interviewing is a common strategy in almost every interview you’ll go through. It’s also the most challenging technique to get ready for. Or is it? Find out how you can simply tell accounts and ace any interview you walk into.

Behavioural Interview Questions are definitely not a “new” interviewing strategy, even so they can catch you unexpectedly if you’re not well prepared. While you can spend time mastering an excellent “canned” response to a few questions similar to “tell me about yourself” it’s more challenging to be prepared for questions you don’t know.

Or is it?

The particular challenge with this interview method for interviewees is the fact that in place of getting good expected questions like “tell me about yourself” or “Why should I hire you” a behavioural interview question could be anything. The fact is that, you’ll perhaps never hear the exact same question twice.

This technique was designed to probe your capability by using experience to respond to questions in an open ended form. Usually interviewers take advantage of answers to predict your possible behavior.

How To Prepare For the Unknown?

If you do not know what the question is how could you possibly be prepared?

I noticed in general the best way to reply to these sorts of questions is to literally tell a story.

As a recruiter I very much appreciate listening to a brief story as opposed to hearing dull robotic responses, especially because a response like, “Yeah, I can do that.” is not going to amaze anyone.

But there is a catch! When you tell a story, it has to be necessary, persuasive and quick.

How will you do that? Be a STAR that’s how.

STAR is a very popular acronym for putting together answers to behavioural interview questions and it also compliments our short story method perfectly.

Here’s how it goes:

S = Specific situation

T = Task or target

A = Actions you took

R = Results from your actions.

The framework of your stories should consist of a predicament or situation, a task or target you set, the action or activity you took, and the outcome that benefited the firm.

Keep your story fast moving and to the point. If it’s fascinating you could potentially be asked to elaborate further.

Being More Specific about questions

Before heading into an interview make sure to find out what the company might consider important the most, are they a new company and want flexibility, or maybe a large enterprise looking for a specific skill, or a non-for profit that is looking for core values.

Whenever you’re asked a question be sure to produce an example when you effectively “used” methods that are inline with the company values. For instance I “saved money by doing xy”, or “I created a new abc”, or “I understood the values and worked on a mutually agreed deal”.

Don’t Ramble

When you give an answer to interview questions don’t let your responses wander from topic to topic. Be sure you come up with the story with STAR in mind.

First of all, discuss the situation, then what task you did, actions you took as well as your actions accomplished. Stay with the topic.

Prove You Can Make it!

Behavioural interview questions are a good way to prove that you are the ideal person for the work by mentioning specific examples. While you can’t clearly forecast a question you can easily try to remember stories from your employment that display that you currently have the expertise and competencies necessary to be successful.

While you can’t anticipate the exact behavioural interview questions you’ll get in an interview there are some tips you can easily learn to help tackle these type of questions. Visit my site Behavioural Interview Questions and learn fearless interviewing no matter what the question.. Free reprint available from: Share A Story To Ace Behavioural Interview Questions.

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Topics: Motivation | Comments Off

Tags: behavioural interview questions, career, job interview, Motivation

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