Group A 05Divay Mor

Jugjot Singh Wasson Rahul Aggarwal

Reema Ghosh Roy Saravana Madhusudhan B.

Sumit Laad

Behavioral based Interviewing

“A series of job related questions that focus on how the candidate reacted to actual situations in the past.”

• Past performance and experience - include work experience, activities, hobbies, volunteer work, school projects, family life that are desirable for the position being interviewed.

Behavioral questions -seek demonstrated examples of behaviour from your past experience and concentrate on job related functions• Open-ended questions -- require more than a yes of no response. They

often begin with "Tell me...", "Describe...", "When...".Example: Describe a time you had to be flexible in planning a workload.

• Close-ended questions -- Used mostly to verify or confirm information. Example: You have a degree in economics, is that correct?

• Why questions -- Used to reveal rationale for decisions you have made or to determine your level of motivation. Example: Why did you decide to major in this program at IIM A rather than at a university abroad?

Behavioral-based interview

» Global examples : Accenture , AT&T , P&G have been using it for more than 15 years

» IIM-A Experiences : TAS, P&G , Mahindra & Mahindra, HUL use it during their application process as well as selection interview process both for final and summer placement process.

Contemporary Examples

Traditional Interview

Why behavioral interviews?

» The most accurate predictor of future performance is past performance in similar situations.

Research suggest it to be 55 % predictive of future on-the-job behaviour, while traditional interviewing is only 10 % predictive.

» More pointed, more probing and more specific questions don’t provide interviewee an opportunity to fudge answer or put desirable answer as in the case of situational interview.

» Stresses on how one handled a situation, instead of what one might do in the future thus reveal the extent to which the candidate possesses core characteristics/competencies

Example : For customer service orientation, asking about how one handled an irate customer provides better insights.

Benefits

» Creating a standard is difficult – Looking at anecdotes and linking them to job criteria entails subjectivity.

» Context of the example given – Context of the incident is as important as the approach undertaken by the interviewee. Same approach doesn’t work well in all contexts.

» Likelihood of missing vital information – Candidate might not know the extent to which information is sought and without further probing questions vital information may get lost.

» Taking one example as reflecting the breadth of a person’s skill – There is a risk in generalising from one example as an indicator of behavioural competence across a range of circumstances.

» Panels generally focus on negative examples –Finding out how people foster a positive working environment is equally important as their actions in challenging negative situations.

Limitations

Pre interview

• Job Analysis and creating job description• Creating job specific behavioral questions and decide the

evaluation parameters

During

interview

• Panel should do active listening and stay focused .• Intense nature of the questions require overcoming emotional

reactions and remaining in control to elicit more information.

Post interview

• Final decision to be based on a complete structured interview consisting a mix of situational, behavioral, background, and job knowledge questions rather than behavioral alone.

Conducting an effective behavioral interview

Skills that are usually assessed are

» Functional or Transferable Skills -- are used with people, information or things such as organizing, managing, developing, communicating, etc. These skills are expressed as verbs.

» Adaptive or Self-Management Skills -- are personal characteristics such as dependable, team player, self directed, punctual, etc. expressed as adjectives.

Skills assessed vary with the job requirements but can be clubbed under the above two heads.

Skills that can be assessed

Different soft skills that can be assessed

Due to its inherent merits of assessing the fit of the candidate based on the past experiences it is used across various job families such as :

- Managerial - Clerical/ Administrative - Support Services - Professionals ( Sales/ Marketing etc.)

Positions where it can be used

A typical behavioral based evaluation template for a managerial position

» Behavioral Interview : http://jobsearch.about.com/cs/interviews/a/behavioral.htm

» Behavioral Interviewing Guide http://www.albright.edu/resources/careercenter/Behavioral-Interviewing-Guide.pdf

» FAQs About Behavioral Interviews : University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Career Services http://www.uwec.edu/career/online_library/behavioral_int.htm

» http://www.selectioncriteria.com.au/a-limitations.html» http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Conduct-a-Performance-

Based--Behavioral-Interview---Hiring-Emotionally-Intelligent-People&id=1112579

References