Good behavioral interview training?

October 19, 2017 8:23 AM

Along with a few others at my company, I'm looking for behavioral interview training and having trouble finding it. We are hoping to find something in-person so that we can get actual practice and feedback, rather than just explanations. Any recommendations, especially if you've been through the training and found it useful?

If it matters, we're at a software development company, but we hire for a variety of positions (not just developers). We have both interpersonal and technical-based interviews; I'm mostly involved in the interpersonal interviews, but if you have suggestions for training that is focused on technical skills, that would be useful as well.

Thanks in advance for any help!

posted by greenmagnet to Work & Money (3 answers total)

I'm not sure if this is against the rules, but instead of helping (because I can't) I'd instead like to advise you against behavioral interview questions.

I have been a hiring manager for appx 10 years, so I'm no expert, but I have thought about this topic quite a bit. The point of an interview is to gauge performance on the job. At some point, someone in Human Resources read a book that suggested that behavioral interview questions are the "most likely" to reflect how people would actually behave in a situation.

And so it became the norm.

Unfortunately, now that it is the norm, it no longer has a good predictive ability. When candidates are faced with a behavioral based question, they now know that they should answer it with a Situation, Behavior, and Outcome, and make the behavior what THEY did and the outcome HAS to be positive. I've had candidates that are very well-rehearsed in behavioral questions that were bad employees, and great employees that couldn't follow the format.

Once you find the most qualified person, I would gauge them on things other than "knowing how to answer weird HR questions". Specifically, I now rate on the following factors:

1. Responsiveness to Emails / overall email ettiquette.
2. Friendliness
3. Receptiveness to feedback
4. Their resume and experience, number of years of experience amplified by a variety of positions similar to their future one.
5. Ambition and drive to succeed and grow.

I think there are ways to evaluate the above without behavioral based questions. I mean, for #3, you could ask them "Tell me about a time when you received bad feedback or was told your work was unsatisfactorily completed." They could respond "Well, when I was at X company, I was working on X project, where I was doing X, and because of this problem that wasn't my fault, we were late, and so my supervisor said being late was unacceptable, and so I worked really hard and collaborated and finished on time."

That response would get a 10/10 in the "can they answer behavioral based questions" test but it doesn't actually answer "How well they respond to feedback" at all.

I like to personally email candidates a few days before they come in and interview and ask them to change their resume. I ask them for the 6 bullet points that sums up their resume, one sentence each. Then, during the interview I'll ask why they chose those things.

This simple exercise allows me to get a sense of their correspondence style, their task completion mentality, their ability to follow through. It's not asking them to do anything unfair (can you code me this project) but it allows them to demonstrate value to me.

I usually ask one or two behavioral based questions. But when I take notes about it, I usually write the line "Peter has been trained on behavior-based questions."

Hope this perspective helps! You can do better than random HR people :)
posted by bbqturtle at 9:02 AM on October 19, 2017 [15 favorites]

Yes. I do so much behavioral interviewing. I'm sitting in a room right now reading your question while waiting for my interviewee to show up for a behavioral interview. Some general tips:

1) Force them to be specific. "Tell me about a time when..." is the prompt. Do not let them give a general answer about how they handle situations of this nature or how they would handle a hypothetical situation.

2) You should have a script for yourself, and a clear rubric for what attributes you are looking for candidates to demonstrate in the same way you do for technical interviews.

3) bbqturtle is totally right that some people know how to handle these kinds of interviews and some people don't. Preparing the candidates is key, especially for technical candidates who often aren't used to this kind of question. We send people prep materials via email beforehand, so they have a general sense of what attributes we want them to demonstrate in their answers and that they know to review their resumes beforehand so they can talk about things and not answer "I don't remember" to every "tell me about a time when..." question, or start whiteboarding the tech stack when what you really want to know is how they handled a disagreement with a colleague about technical decisions. Sometimes it still doesn't work and you have to steer them really hard during the interview and/or cut them off.

4) As always, practice practice practice! Interview co-workers on your team. Interview co-workers on other teams. Write up notes and evaluations like you would for a real interview. Interview someone with another co-worker in the room and have both of you write up evaluations and make sure you reached the same conclusion. This is super critical.

Your original question was a bit general but if you have specific other questions I'd be happy to do my best to answer.
posted by phoenixy at 11:27 AM on October 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Best answer: One place I worked for used DDI's Targeted Selection. The training had exactly what you're looking for: opportunities to practice and get feedback with a team, plus tools to make the process more consistent.

That place had the most rigorous and intensive interview process I've ever experienced, and was also the best place I've worked.

And I just noticed that my former employer is featured as a case study on the Targeted Selection website!
posted by jeoc at 12:12 PM on October 19, 2017