Behavioral Interview Questions

What are behavioral interview questions?

An interviewer uses behavioral questions to try to find out how a job applicant has responded to a real situation in the past. The questions focus on the applicant’s behavior, skills and job-related abilities.

Many companies believe that behavioral interviews give them better insight into how an applicant will actually perform in the new position. Instead of asking an applicant what he or she “would do” in a situation, the interviewer finds out what the applicant actually did, more or so the outcome of the situation.

Here is an example of a couple of questions that you could be asked:

What specific steps did you take in order to complete the assigned task?

What difficulties did you face? How did you overcome them?

Want more? Here are 65 behavioral interview questions.

Answering behavioral interview questions

When interviewers ask behavioral interview questions, they are looking for specific examples of how you responded to a situation. It is important to give specific details in your answer to the specific problem.

You can use the STAR strategy to help you answer behavioral questions effectively. STAR stands for Situation, Task, Action and Results.