Behavioural interviews are an important recruitment tool used by employers. They allow graduate recruiters to use your past experiences to evaluate your emotional response to specific workplace situations. It is important for you to be prepared for behavioural interviews. This article provides tips on answering behavioural interview questions effectively.
What are behavioural interview questions?
Behavioural interview questions provide employers with knowledge about your likely response when faced with a particular situation. Employers are informed about your personality and working style, allowing a determination to be made of whether you are well-suited for the company. These questions will often invoke challenges that the employer believes you are likely to face in the role. You are required to provide a response that highlights your response and solution to the challenge. Your answer therefore informs on your conflict-resolution and problem-solving skills.
How to prepare for behavioural interview questions?
Here are some tips to help you effectively prepare for behavioural interview questions.
Research
Research is one of the most effective tools for acing any type of job interview. By conducting research into the company, graduate program or organisation, you can gain valuable knowledge about the employer. This knowledge includes operational insights into the company, their quarterly or annual goals, and their values. It can be sourced from their website, social media pages, quarterly or annual reports, and any news articles that have been written about the company. This information can be connected to your experience in your responses to the interview questions to demonstrate your suitability in the role. Research also shows the employer the seriousness and sincerity of your interest in working at the company.
Resume and Cover Letter
An impressive resume and cover letter will include important information about your work experience, education, skills, and strengths. The interviewer may choose to ask you something about your resume, which can serve as a great jumping off point to highlight your ability to perform well in situations that you might face in the role.
Dress Appropriately
Attend the interview wearing professional business attire, appearing calm, and maintaining eye contact. This is important, as behavioural interviews can often be more stressful than a regular interview. They explicitly focus on challenges and conflicts in the workplace to garner your response in such an environment. You should therefore appear calm, collected, and confident. This shows that you will bring the same energy and mindset to the role.
Practice
Before the interview, practise your responses. This can be either with a friend or by yourself. Practising with someone else can help you gain some feedback. If you are by yourself, look into a mirror so that you can examine your body language and facial impressions. Do you appear flustered when answering a particular question? Do you turn red? Are you fidgeting with your hands? Practice can allow you to spot these issues and amend them so you appear more calm and confident. However, ensure that while reciting your answers, you do not sound over-rehearsed or mechanical.
How to answer behavioural interview questions?
Here are the steps to follow when answering behavioural interview questions.
Step 1: Understand the position
You should understand the position that you are applying for. This involves carefully considering the requirements of the role by studying the job description and the selection criteria. Reflect on the situations and challenges you can expect to occur while working in this role and brainstorm your methodology for addressing them and the solution to resolving them. This can allow you to ‘predict’ the interview questions and plan a well-thought out response that will impress the interviewer.
It is also important to fixate your answers to the interviewer’s questions around the role. Graduates are less likely to have direct employment experience in the occupation or industry, but you can highlight aspects of your personality, strengths, skills, education or work experience that are directly relevant to resolving the situation or challenge. You can always make mention of how these skills are transferable to the position you are interviewing for.
Step 2: Provide Evidence
The purpose of behavioural interview questions is to give you the opportunity to prove to the employer that you have the necessary skills to excel at the role. This means that you must use examples from your employment history, work experience, extra-curricular activities, education, and achievements to demonstrate why and how you can appropriately respond to these challenges. This will inform the interviewer on your suitability for the role by portraying the ways in which your previous experience can help you in your future employment at their company.
Step 3: Use the STAR Method
Your response should be direct, concise, and clear. Do not deviate from the question you are meant to be responding to. Do not jump from one point to another. Your answer should be focused on identifying a similar situation or challenge you have faced and the actions you took using the skills you possessed to resolve it. The STAR Method can help you accomplish that. STAR stands for situation, task, action and result. It is used to break down a response to an interview question so that it provides a direct answer that is well-articulated, evidenced, and impressive. Read our informative article on using the STAR Method here.
What are some examples of behavioural interview questions?
Here is a list of the most common behavioural interview questions that an interviewer can ask.
- Tell me about a time you had a conflict with a team member. How did you handle the situation and what did you learn from it?
- Give an example about a time you made a mistake. How did you resolve it and what did you learn from that experience?
- Tell me about a time you had to implement time management strategies. What did you do and how did you find the experience?
- Give me an example of a time that you failed. What did you learn from the situation?
- Tell me about a time you took initiative to advance your career and what were your motivations behind it?
- Tell me about a time when you were unsure on how to complete a task. How did you handle the situation and what did you learn?
- Tell me about a time when you worked towards accomplishing a career goal?
- How do you resolve problems in the workplace? Talk me through the steps that you would take.
- Tell me about a time you resolved a dispute with a client. How did you manage it?
- Describe a time where you were required to step out of your comfort zone. How did you handle the situation and what did you learn from your experience?
- Give me an example of a situation where you had to respond to an unethical request by your supervisor. How did you respond and what did you learn from the situation?
Example Response
Tell me about a time when you were in a dispute with a colleague. How did you handle the situation and what did you learn from it?
I was working as a part-time barista at a local cafe while studying full-time at university. One time, when it was only me and another barista working, we had a dispute over how to handle a customer complaint. A regular customer had complained about her coffee and said that we had left out an ingredient. My colleague was overworked and snapped at the customer. The customer left in a hurry, and I confronted my colleague about her behaviour. She insisted that she was in the right as the customer was lying to get a free coffee. I was stressed about the situation as I did not know what it would mean for the cafe. I ended up talking with my colleague calmly about the situation and she agreed to apologise and give the customer a free coffee the next time she came in. I also offered to cover one of my colleague’s shifts for her as she had been under a lot of stress. My colleague ended up apologising the next time she saw the customer and the customer accepted the apology.
This response outlines the situation, the action taken by the interviewee to resolve the conflict, and the result. It also demonstrates the communication, conflict resolution, and customer service skills of the graduate.
Read more about how to answer common grad job interview questions here.