“Congratulations! Your
resume has been shortlisted for the interview."
These are the words which give you butterflies in your stomach and
put you right into motion. After the
initial mini celebration is over , the big thing dawns on you, that the real
deal starts now and hence, you pack up your emotions and begin your preparation
for the D-Day—the interview.
But wait! What sort of questions should you prepare for? Would
you only be preparing the traditional questions or some behavioral questions as
well?
Let’s find an answer to this question by first understanding
the basic difference between these two types of interviews.
Traditional v/s Behavioral interview
In a traditional interview, the HR asks some basic set of
questions in order to seek as much as information as they can in a given period
of time. This includes open and closed ended questions like ‘tell me about yourself?’, ‘why should I
hire you?’, and ‘what are your strengths?’, ‘are you open to relocate?’ Such
questions help the HR in figuring out the fitment for the given profile. On the
other hand, Behavioral interviews are comparatively more comprehensive and
difficult to crack. In behavioral interviews, specific questions are asked in
order to target and understand a specific behavior of the candidate.
It is a popular belief that a person’s past behavior is the best predictor of future
behavior. On the basis of the person’s past performance and work record, an
interviewer predicts the future on-the-job behavior of the candidate.
Nowadays, employers lay a lot of focus on the behavioral
interviews as they use it as a perimeter to
check, whether you have the competencies needed for the job in question.
For the people who aren’t well aware about the concept of
Competency, “Competencies are the set of skills required to perform a
particular job.” In simple words, Competency = Job Behavior.
While designing the behavioral questions, the employer
considers your resume; the desired competencies required for the job profile in
question and then structure the interview questions around it. At the time of the
interview, you will be further probed for more details to cross check and to
measure your consistency with the answers.
Irrespective of whether you are an experienced professional
or a fresh graduate, you should be prepared for the behavioral interviews as
they play a very prominent role in helping you get the job.
Preparing for behavioral interviews
Behavioral interviews are quite structured and therefore,
your answers should also be likewise, that is, not too long or too short. It’s
a kind of ‘story telling’ because you are required to share past instances and
experiences to justify your answer.
Therefore, while preparing for such an interview, you should
make rigorous efforts to create stories with parlance to the relevant
competencies.
- Creating stories from the past that show favorable behaviors or actions and creating a short description of the same, which covers the relevant information in brief.
- All the answers should have proper opening, middle explanation and a conclusion.
- Be honest as you can as there would be further probing based on the answers you give.
- Bring variety to the answers in terms of time or the area that you choose to give the example about, like school life, college life, last organization etc.
- Listen to the question very carefully, evaluate the most relevant example and narrate it carefully.
Remember that it’s just not all about having the right
skills, but also about how well you are able to market your skills to the
interviewer. And, with the right preparation and marketing behind you, who
knows you might land up your dream job because as someone rightly said “Success
is where preparation and opportunity meet”.
- Ms. Priya Bali
Faculty, INLEAD
Images Courtesy- Google Images
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