Behavior Based Interviewing - Hurtado & Associates

By R. B. Wright, CPCU

All utilities would like to hire people they can count on to show up, to be on time, who are willing to pitch in with other members of the crew to get the job done, and who consistently try to do the job right the first time. You could probably list other positive attributes you would like to find in candidates. But how can you tell if an applicant has the positive behavior characteristics you believe will lead to success at the job you are trying to fill?

The best predictor of future behavior is pastbehavior. If you know how a person has responded to events in the past, you will have a pretty good idea of how that person will respond to similar situations in the future. Your challenge, then, is to find out just how an applicant reacted to specific circumstances in their past, assembling bit by bit the information that will allow you to make reasonable predictions of their future behavior. But how can you find out this type of detail? Of course, it would be great if prior employers were free to tell you all the things you want to know about a candidate's past behavior but in today's legal climate, previous employers may not be very helpful. So, the interview setting is your only real chance to learn about an applicant's history. But how can you use an interview to find out about a candidate's past behavior?

Many hiring managers have never had any formal training in how to conduct an interview. Instead, they rely on trial and error to build their own interviewing style. As a result, these untrained managers often repeat mistakes that have been made by others in the past and, unless they are very astute in refining their own techniques, they run the risk of repeating their own mistakes in interview after interview, ending up wondering why the people who come to work for them never perform quite as they expected. Let's take a look at the interviewing process and see what mistakes we can identify and avoid, as well as what the alternatives are.

A typical mistake of the novice interviewer is to ask leading questions that can be answered "yes" or "no." For example, if being on time to the job site is a concern, a common question might be something like this:

"We need to start promptly every morning at 8:00 AM. You don't have a problem with that, do you?"

But seriously, what would you say if someone asked you that question? Obviously, the applicant is not going to say that being on time is a problem, since it is clear from the question what the desired answer is. The applicant will naturally say "No, I have no problem getting to work at 8:00 AM." Have you really learned anything from this question and answer, other than the fact that this candidate is smart enough to understand the intent of your question? In fact, only a very dim bulb would say, "Yes, I have a problem getting to work in the morning."

Some hiring managers have learned that they want to get the applicant talking and should ask "open-ended" questions that can't be answered with "yes" or "no." In order to get at the issue of being on time, this interviewer would ask a question like this:

"What would you do if you were asked to be at work by 8:00 AM at our job site?"

This question is open ended, but it is also hypothetical, and invites the applicant to think of the best story he can to prove to you that he is reliable. The candidate will likely say something like "I will have no trouble being on time to whatever job site you send me to. I really pride myself on my reliability and promptness." But what have you learned from this exchange? Only that, as in the first example, this applicant understands from your question that you want him to be on time, and can also think of a personal value statement that sounds good in this regard. You still don't know if this person really will try diligently to show up on time. So we can see that just avoiding yes/no questions is not the whole solution.

The trained interviewer uses direct questions that are open ended, but require a specific examplefrom the applicant's past. The fastest, simplest way to learn about an applicant's past behaviors is to ask questions that are designed to draw out these past behaviors. Yes, if you ask the right questions in the right way, you'll be amazed by what a candidate will actually come right out and tell you. Unfortunately, without some guidance or insight, most interviewers ask questions they think will reveal something personal about the candidate and spend too much of their time asking questions about the candidate's work experience, with the result that they end up knowing next to nothing about how well the person will perform on the job.

Behavior Based interviewing addresses these problems by focusing directly on learning about the candidate's past on-the-job behaviors. To repeat the statement above; this is the best information to get because a candidate's past behavior is the best indicator of futurebehavior. But Behavior Based interviewing is not just simply a matter of asking different or better questions. To get truly useful information, you have to invest some of your own time in preparation for the interview. Here is how it works.

First, you must develop a list behaviors that you believe are shared by successful employees doing this job; the job you are hiring for. You might start by thinking about the best worker you have now who does this job. Why is that person so good? You might then list specific things this worker does, like follows company rules and direction; sees what needs to be done and pitches in; offers good suggestions aimed at getting the work done correctly the first time; shows up for work on time; acts as part of a team. This preparation requires some diligent effort and analysis on your part, but it is a critical part of the process. Only after you identify the important successful behavior patterns, like those characteristics of the good performers you already have in your company, will you know exactly what you're looking for in a new worker.

Then, using your list of desirable behaviors, prepare (and write down) interview questions that will probe into your applicants' past behavior to see if they exhibit the desired traits. This means, rather than asking hypothetical or general "what if..." or "have you ever done..." questions, as typically asked by unprepared interviewers, you should instead ask questions like:

"Can you remember a time when you thought bending or ignoring a company rule was necessary to getting a job or task done? Tell me about the situation. What was the rule that you thought would get in the way and what did you do? How did things come out?"
"Can you recall a time in your work when you saw a co-worker who was swamped by the things he had to do or had fallen behind in getting his part done, perhaps to the point it was slowing up the project? Tell me about it. What did you do?"
"Can you ever remember a time when you saw a much better way to get something done and wanted to tell someone about it? What was it? Who did you tell and what happened?"
"Think back to a time when you were late to work. Tell me when it happened and what the circumstances were. What happened? What did you do?"(You may need to ask for another instance, and another, to begin to see the pattern.)

Notice how these questions ask about specific behaviors, and are not hypothetical or yes/no questions like "Do you think you can...?" or "Can you get here on time?" For example, that last sample question above might reveal just how much a candidate values being on time. It might reveal a total ambivalence to being late, or it might reveal just how hard the applicant tried to avoid surprising his prior employer, by calling the office, by sending word with another co-worker, by arranging alternate transportation, etc. The answers to any of these questions will give you insight into the candidates' true behaviors and attitudes toward work-related situations. The key is that instead of asking hypothetical "What if..." or "How would you handle..." type questions, instead you ask applicants specifically to "Think back to a time when...and tell me about it." These are behavior-based questions created around the characteristics you listed before you ever started the interviews. The questions are based on actual job performance criteria, not some "gut feeling" and not on what appeals to you as a social person.

To successfully compare applicants, it is important to ask all your candidates the samequestions. To make sure that you do, and to keep straight who said what, use an interview guide on which you have written down your list of questions. As you go through each interview, take notes of the responses each candidate gives you. When you are done, review the answers given by all the applicants. You'll be amazed at what you will learn from the differences and at how quickly you can identify the better performers.

Remember, hiring new workers who have the right attitude and desire to do a good job is more important, in most cases, than hiring those with long "experience." It is easier to teach people with good behavioral characteristics the technical aspects of a job than it is to teach people with technical skills the good sense of cooperative attitudes about duty, responsibility, teamwork and safety.