Throughout my site, you’ll see a variety of ways I offer job interviewing tips and give answers behavioral questions.
As you read through my sample questions and answers, you’ll begin to see a pattern and then you’ll start to see how you can apply the same techniques to your past accomplishments and achievements and give stellar behavioral interview answers.
Behavioral or competency-based interviews are simply a set of questions that ask you to talk about examples from your past work experience to help an interviewer figure out your strengths in certain key competency areas that are required for this position.
Skilled behavioral interviewers will look for the three parts (Problem, Action, Results) of your answer and takes notes about how you answered the question.
You don’t necessarily have talk about the three parts in order. Though tricky to figure out, it is best to talk about the part your interviewer is more interested in listing to.
For example, if your interviewer is more results oriented, then talking about the result first would me more appealing to that person. This is more of an advanced strategy and if you’re not sure, then talk about them in order.
Before your interview, think about your story and experiences and how best to make your point. Every situation is different, so you need to be prepared for what you think they will want to hear.
Here are several behavioral interviewing tips you can use to make sure you are well prepared for your next behavioral interview.
1. Carefully listen to your interviewer and the question they are asking you. Let them finish asking you the question and don’t jump to any conclusions about how to answer it. You might even repeat the question back to them to help you get a better feel for it.
2. Carefully choose you’re your language when answering their questions. Try to use language that is specific to your industry as this will allow you to be perceived as an expert in your field.
3. Before your interview, research words, terms, and jargon that might be used by the company you are interviewing with and incorporate that language into your answers.
4.When giving your answers, don’t go into extreme detail, just give them the basic facts. This allows for two things:
- It shortens the length of your answer making it more digestible to your interviewer. Basically, they’ll have a better idea of what you just said because you explained in a simple manner.
- A shorter answer allows for your interviewer to ask follow-up questions about some of the details, and now you can further demonstrate your competencies by answering those specific questions. Statistics and financial numbers are great, so be prepared to cite them in your answer.
5. Carefully choose examples from you past that you want to talk about because any follow-up questions is fair game. If you are unwilling to go into detail about certain topics, then avoid bringing them up.
6. One of the best job interviewing tips is not to blame anyone for failure when answering their questions, even if someone is to blame. It’s your goal to remain positive when answering their questions. Companies don’t like to hire people with a negative influence and who fail to take responsibility for their actions.
The only person you can blame is yourself, everyone else is off limits. You’re not there to defend yourself, do don’t act like it.
7. The best way to answer their questions is to talk about the most important part, first. This strategy simply applies to our human nature. We like to hear the best part first as it keeps us interested in the conversations. And doing so with your interviewer will allow you to hold his/her interest.
Inside The Complete Interview Answer Guide, you’ll find behavioral interviewing tips you can use. Inside the guide, Don shows job seekers how to answer interview questions. The 201+ sample answers in the guide will quickly help you craft your own professional answers for ALL types of interview questions for any occupation.
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