How to Prepare for a Behavioral Interview

By Alyssa Laffitte on September 25, 2017

You might hear a lot about traditional interviews, but have you ever heard of behavioral interviews? A behavioral interview is not the same as a traditional interview.

In a traditional interview, you are asked questions about how you would potentially handle working at a certain company. You have likely heard many of these questions before and there are many resources online to help you prepare to answer them.

On the other hand, behavioral interviews ask you about specific instances in which you used a skill you will need at their workplace. For example, a good behavioral question would be, “Tell us about a time you led a group” or “What did you do when things went wrong during that project?” Behavioral interviews focus on concrete examples from your past to determine whether you will do well working at a particular company in the future.

How to Prepare for Your Behavioral Interview

Preparing for a behavioral interview is a challenge due to the wide range of questions you might be asked. However, you can look at a list of common behavioral interview questions and think about how you can answer them. Answer them with stories that will show the interviewers you have the qualities they are looking for in a candidate.

Some questions you can think about are:

•How did you handle making a mistake at work?

•Have you ever led a team?

•Tell us about a time when you set a goal and met it. (Or the contrary, how have you dealt with unmet goals?)

•How do you deal with difficult situations with co-workers, customers, or your boss?

•Tell us about a time where you solved a problem.

•Tell us about how you handled a pressuring situation.

Check out this article from The Balance for more example behavioral interview questions.

It’s hard to predict what you will be asked. You might not be asked any of those questions! Still, they will help you get into the right mindset to answer the questions you will be asked.

Image via Isorepublic.com

More generally, you can think about qualities you have that make you stand out, and then remember a specific occasion when you demonstrated this quality. Practice telling this story.

Although there is no way to tell exactly what questions they will ask you during a behavioral interview, you can still prepare by thinking of answers to common questions.

How to Respond to Behavioral Interview Questions

There is a technique you can use to make sure you give good, complete answers during behavioral interviews. This technique is called the STAR method, an acronym for Situation, Task, Action, and Results.

•First, introduce the situation. Set the stage for your amazing act. What caused the problem you are trying to solve?

•Second, tell the interviewers about the task you were asked to complete. What problems were you trying to solve? What were you trying to accomplish?

•Third, bring in your action. What exactly did you do to solve this problem? Did you face any difficulties? If so, talk about how you overcame them.

•Finally, get into the results of your action. Did you resolve a conflict? Did you boost the company’s sales? Did you come up with an amazing new idea? Tell your interviewers about how you were able to contribute to the company. If you have specific numbers or statistics you can tell them, even better!

One More Tip …

During a behavioral interview, you will often be asked to talk about a problem or a failure you have faced. It’s easy to focus on the problem or failure itself, but don’t do this! Shift the focus from the negative situation to the positive solution. Keep the focus on how you were able to solve the problem. The interviewers don’t want to hear about the problem, they want to hear about how you used your awesome skills to solve it.

As young college students, we are bombarded with information on how to succeed in traditional interviews. This is great, but there is not much out there about behavioral interviews. All in all, just be honest and focus on the positives, and you should do well. Good luck with your interview!

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