Behavioral Event-Based Interviewing

Behavioral interviewing is a relatively new style of interviewing that was developed in the 1970s by industrial psychologists. Behavioral interviewing is based upon the principle that the most accurate predictor of future performance is past performance in a similar situation.

Unlike traditional interviews, which include questions such as:

•  Tell me about yourself.
•  What are your strengths and weaknesses?
•  Why are you interested in working for us?

Behavioral interviewing emphasizes past performance and behaviors. Questions might be phrased along these lines:

•  Think of an occasion when you had to handle a particular situation.
•  Give me an example from your experience in which you did that.

Follow up questions to the candidate's answers may be:

•  What needed to be done about it?
•  What was the result of your actions?

Examples sought might address values/ethics, teamwork, interpersonal skills, problem solving, people management, leadership, creative thinking and other competencies associated with success on the job. Companies that employ behavioral interviewing have predetermined the skill sets or competencies that they require for a particular position. HermanCheckStart generates a set of behavioral interview questions for you to use with each candidate. These are based upon a set of competencies that are generally associated with success in each of the HermanCheckStart job categories. You may choose to use whichever questions you like or you may add more of your own.