While employers in this day and age may be seeing less opportunity to be picky about making hires, a thoughtful, intentional job interview can still go a long way toward boosting staff retention. According to a Society for Human Resource Managers blog post by HR executive Stephen Johnson, taking a behavior-based approach to interviewing and hiring can boost the probability of success by as much as 90%.
Behavior-based hiring is predicated on a basic concept: that past behavior is the best predictor of future success. Asking job candidates to describe work experiences where they were likely to exhibit certain sought-after behaviors gets to the heart of whether or not someone is truly the right fit for a position.
For Carver Smith, managing partner, and Diane Roundy, director of executive search, with the Wisconsin-based firm Truity Partners, behavior-based interviewing is highly effective — but only if it’s done right. When it’s done poorly, Smith says, it’s “clunky;” when it’s done right, it’s “conversational.”
Getting it wrong, getting it right
Conversational doesn’t mean free-wheeling or without intention, Smith says, and “winging it” is never the right answer. Interviewers who don’t research and prepare are likely to fall into one of several common traps, including talking too much; taking a surface-level “check the box” approach to asking questions; and wasting time with irrelevant, redundant or biased questions.
“I had a hiring manager at a company who loved to ask people, ‘What is the last book you read?’” Smith says. “When I asked what he was trying to achieve with that question, he said, ‘Well, I want to know if people are intellectually curious.’”
At the time, Smith had young children. He asked the hiring manager what it might say about his intellectual curiosity that the last two books he read were “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” and “Goodnight Moon.”
Other common interview mistakes include asking a candidate what they “could, would or should do” in a situation (“What you’re really testing there is someone’s ability to B.S.,” Smith says, or “can they regurgitate a leadership book they read.”) or trying to stump them (“I don’t see that much anymore, but if we have a client that likes to do that we try to counsel them out of it,” Roundy says.)
A good job interview will thoughtfully, efficiently explore a wide range of factors that contribute to success: a candidate’s skills, whether their motivations match the opportunity, and even the candidate’s values, in addition to behaviors.
The first step in behavior-based interviewing is to identify and agree upon the behaviors your organization is seeking in a candidate, Smith explains. For example, perhaps “taking ownership” is an important trait. Consult with your hiring team to identify what that means — for example, not letting a project fail because the employee treats the company like it’s their own.
Connecting with candidates
Once you understand the behaviors and what they might look like, Smith recommends asking probing questions, perhaps inspired by specific items on the candidate’s resume, that will lead to stories. But even if you drill in on something and don’t get an example of the specific behavior you’re looking for, Smith says, keep the conversation flowing. You still may gain insight on skills, motivations and values. Don’t be afraid to pivot to a back-up question, either.
“We coach our candidates to think about stories, examples you can give in real life that will relate to, for example, these four things [the client] is looking for,” Roundy says — but ultimately, experts agree, it’s up to the interviewer to connect the dots of how those stories are relevant.
Paula Stettbacher, director of human resources at Ripon College, says a good answer to a behavior-based interview question will include a “B.A.R.” — background, action and result, with “R” the most likely to be left out or not followed up on by the interviewer. Using active listening skills and asking follow-up questions “without grilling the candidate,” she says, are the keys to building rapport and gaining insights into skills, behaviors and values.
Smith has been an advocate of the behavior-based methodology for more than three decades, he says, and many trained HR practitioners are likely to use the technique in interviews. On the flip side, there are employees not trained in the methodology who can make an interview really awkward really fast by saying things like, “Now I’m going to ask you some behavior-based interview questions that HR makes me ask.” If that’s your execution, Smith says, just skip it.
“It’s like any other muscle,” he says. “You need training and conditioning, and you need somebody who’s done it well to help you with it.”
