What are the Steps to Prepare For a Behavioral Interview?

During your job interviews, as a candidate, you will be asked a set of behavioral interview questions by your interviewer to gauge and explore how you handled certain circumstances in your workplace. As a result, the interviewer will get an insight to understand your problem-solving skills. Therefore, when you set your answers for job-related questions, ensure you prepare for a behavioral interview too to update your behavioral skills.

The questions would be related to your past experiences that demonstrate your abilities in a specific area. They evaluate how well you have performed and how you approached specific difficult situations using relevant skills. In short, these behavioral questions are designed to see if you are the right person for the job and the company. Moreover, they could foresee your future performance by assessing your past experience in the work environment.

On the whole, an HR professional or a hiring manager often looks for candidates who are not only good at their job skills but also a good fit for the work culture and environment. For that reason, you must prepare for a behavioral interview yourself and understand the importance of it before attending an interview.

In this article, we will discuss the topics:

• How to prepare for a behavioral interview?
• Behavioral interview Pros and Cons.
• Top behavioral interview questions and answers for freshers.

How to Prepare for a Behavioral Interview?

Preparing for a behavioral interview always boosts your confidence by recognizing your strengths and achievements. It helps to present yourself before the interviewer as a candidate with good leadership skills and problem-solving skills. So, there are a few steps to follow when you prepare for a behavioral interview. They are:

1) Read the Job Description: The first step for behavioral-based interview preparation is reading the job description keenly. Look for information related to the company you applied to, and find out their work culture and the type of employees they hire. Doing this step will help you to get an understanding of the required skills, qualities and talent for the job.

2) Make a list of experiences to demonstrate your skills: After understanding the company and job description, think of experiences you encountered at your workplace and make a list of efforts you took to solve the issue. These efforts could be the skills that the company is looking for, such as leadership, problem-solving, communication, team player, goal-oriented, creativity, ability to handle challenges, flexibility, etc. As a result, this step would help you to demonstrate the skills required for the job position.

3) Use the STAR method: Here, STAR refers to Situation, Task, Action, and Result. While coming up with the experiences, you can follow the STAR method for the interview to present them effectively to the interviewer.

• Situation: When you demonstrate your experience, provide the context and details of the challenge you encountered.
• Task: Here, you can mention the role and responsibility you took for the situation.
• Action: You can explain what methods you took to overcome the circumstance.
• Result: Explain the outcome of the situation.

4) Practice: As you prepare for any job interview, ensure you practice your answers and take down notes for better performance in the interview. Also, try to keep a good posture and body language and speak confidently throughout the interview.

If you are a fresher with no experience, the interviewer may ask you questions with what-if scenarios. You can describe a hypothetical situation by defining your role and the steps you took, and its outcome. Or you can share an experience on how you handled certain circumstances during your educational period. Here, the interviewer wants to know how you would manage the conflict. So, you could come up with an answer where you could share a positive approach.

What are the Pros and Cons of Behavioral Interviews?

Behavioral interviews are unstructured interviews that enable an interviewer to understand how a candidate handles certain situations in a work environment. Therefore, the candidate usually gives answers with a story that explains their experience. So, let us go through the pros and cons of behavioral interviews:

Pros

• Behavioral interviews help to understand the candidate's problem-solving skills, critical thinking skills and ability to handle challenges.
• Behavioral interviews have a style that gives deeper details of the candidate than any other type of interview.
• The interviewer gets an insight into the personality of the candidate.
• It guides the interviewer to hire the top candidate that fits their company's environment and culture.
• It helps the candidate to explain their experience effectively.
• Behavioral interviews make candidates comfortable.

Cons

• Sometimes behavioral interviews are intended to gauge the presentation skills of the candidate rather than their problem-solving skills.
• Sometimes top candidates suitable for the job can underperform in the behavior interviews.
• The interviewer must carefully structure questions to get answers that elicit the true personality of the interviewee.

Top Behavioral Interview Questions and Answers for Freshers.

The main purpose why an interviewer conducts a behavioral interview is to understand a candidate's personality, how they handle a situation, how they fit in a workplace, etc. On the other hand, for candidates, it is their time to showcase their talents and skills suitable for the job. So, here are some commonly asked interview questions.

1) Tell me about a time when you overcame a conflict at your workplace:

This question is asked to you to understand your problem-resolving skills and how you approach a conflict in your workplace. Therefore, demonstrate how you figured out the problem and found the solution. Ensure you grab the attention of your interviewer by building an interesting story around your experience.

2) Tell me about a time when you worked effectively and well under pressure :

You are asked this question to evaluate your workability under pressure. Here, you can convince your hiring manager by talking about your quick-decision skills, your ability to manage stress, and your time management.

3) Have you ever made a mistake?

The interviewer wants to know how you handle your mistakes. Therefore come up with an experience where you can briefly explain the mistake and what you learned from them. Here, try to focus on the qualities and approach you used to handle the mistake.

4) Tell me about a time when you had to accept leadership for a team.

The hiring managers usually ask this question to see if you have leadership qualities. Therefore, you can describe the steps you took as a leader and explain the outcome of them.

Conclusion

When you are preparing for a behavioral interview, make sure you practice and prepare specific concise answers to impress the interviewer. Most hiring managers look for employees with problem-solving skills that help their companies to grow and increase profits. Therefore, come up with experiences and incidents where you could prove your ability and skills to excel in the job role.

Frequently Asked Question

Q1. What kind of questions are asked in a behavioral interview?

Ans. In a behavioral interview, the interviewer usually asks questions based on competencies and required skills for the job. Interviewers consider this an effective way to understand the behavior and personality of a candidate behind their resume. They ask questions to evaluate how you handled a situation in your workplace and how you reacted to those situations. This helps the interviewer to understand if you could perform well in the future in the workplace. For example, an interviewer asks questions like 'How you handled a challenge in your workplace? 'Tell me about a time you worked effectively under pressure.'

Q2. How long does it take to prepare for a behavioral interview?

Ans. You can prepare two to three stories to demonstrate your past experiences. Therefore it usually takes two to three hours to prepare your answers for behavioral interview questions. It's worth noting that your answers should only last about one to two minutes maximum. So to prepare, you must read the job description first and think of experiences you encountered in your workplace. After that, you can make a list of skills that qualify you for the job. Finally, you can follow the STAR method to answer.

Q3. Which is the best way to crack a behavioral interview?

Ans. The best way to crack any interview is to speak with confidence and composure. While attending the interview, keep positive body language to impress your interviewer. Answer the questions without any fear or doubt. Moreover, try to keep your answer concise and to the point. You must not talk about your technical skills when taking a behavioral interview. All an interviewer looks for in you is how well you performed in your previous work.

Q4. What should you not say in a behavioral interview?

Ans. Behavioral interviews make the candidate think of situations they dealt with in their workplace. It helps the interviewer to get an insight into the candidates' abilities, skills, and qualities. Therefore, it is important not to say certain things during a behavioral interview. For example, you should not come up with a story not related to the question. The experience you share with the interviewer must have something good to impress. Moreover, never cook up an experience because fake stories are easy to spot.