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How to Answer Behavioral Interview Questions

By Andrew Reed

Behavioral Interviewing can be referred to as Situational Interviewing or Competency Based Interviewing and is becoming increasingly common especially amongst larger corporations.

Microsoft, Citicorp and Accenture all use Behavioral Interviewing and even if your interview is with a small company you may well find that they too are adopting the same techniques.

Behavioral Interview questions ask for examples of situations where you have demonstrated particular skills or behaviors. Answering can seem easy however a truly winning answer will require practice and preparation.

Why Interviewers Ask Behavioral Interview Questions

It is all very easy for candidates to talk about hypothetical situations, i.e. what they would do. This does not give the interviewer a deep insight into the skills they bring, hence questions which explore actual situations the candidate was involved in.

The interviewer wants to know how you performed in the past and the belief is that you can repeat and even improve on this performance in future. They are looking for examples of real true life situations where you had to demonstrate your skills and abilities in order to achieve a successful outcome.

How to Structure Answers to Behavioral Interview Questions

As a candidate, we recommend that you choose answers based on real experiences you have had. Your response needs to be relevant and sufficiently detailed and to help make your answer more engaging use the following structure, called iPAR:

i = Answer in the first person using I rather than We, even if it was a team effort
P = Describe the PROBLEM, situation or task
A = Talk about the ACTIONS you took
R = Describe the successful RESULT by using figures and data to illustrate the benefits

Using this structure you will be able to answer any question they can throw at you and your response will flow naturally. By providing details of the successful result, you give credence and proof of your abilities.

How to Prepare for Your Behavioral Interview

Preparing for a behavioral interview may seem like an impossible task because of the huge variety of different behavioral questions you can be asked. However this is not the case.

Each position will have a limited number of competencies and the interviewer will have chosen select behavioral interview questions to target each of these competencies. With proper research you will be able to discover just what you will be asked about and from this you will have a very good idea of the questions they will pose.

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About the Author

Andrew Reed is an experienced interviewer and has developed successful recruitment strategies for large organizations within the Customer Services, HR and Finance sectors.

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For help with answering Behavioral Interview Questions, I recommend InterviewGOLD™, our dynamic online interview system which contains over 500 Behavioral Interview Questions along with detailed answer guides to every one.