Job interview experience- is this normal nowadays or not?

November 22, 2020 6:45 PM

I recently had an interview for an entry level technical position at a Teapot Testing and Certification company. The pre interview involved taking an OPQ (occupational personality questionnaire) and a large chunk of the interview was devoted to "Critical Behaviors for Success" questions, which the interviewer suggested that I was "probably familiar with, most companies use them." Is this so?

I was a little taken aback by the interview leaning so heavily on this sort of stuff, rather than verifying my technical skills, experience, etc. Due to working for 20+ years at a company and owning my own business for a while, I've only had perhaps 5 or 6 interviews in my middle aged life, so it's possible I'm just not aware of How Things Are These Days. It feels like a bit of corporate B.S. red flag to me, but maybe I need a reality check?

posted by Larry David Syndrome to Work & Money (9 answers total)

What the company called "critical behaviors for success" was probably what is otherwise known as "behavior based interviewing". I'm assuming that the questions were of the form "tell me about a time when..." or "give me an example of..." and it was hard to know what answer they were looking for?

This is actually a much better way of selecting employees than just verifying technical skills. Technical skills can be learned, character can't. Have you ever been turned down for a job or a contract because you didn't have the specific skill they were looking for, but you knew you could learn it easily and would do a great job? BBI is designed to keep those mistakes from happening. I'm not up on the mechanics of optical scanning of resumes, but I would assume they got everything they needed about your technical skills and experience from your resume. You probably passed muster on that or you wouldn't have been invited for an interview. The interview, then, is a chance to get to know you and decide if you're a good fit for the company and the position. I'm sure that's also the reason behind the OPQ as well.

So rather than being a corporate B.S. red flag, their style of interviewing is a sign that they care about who they're hiring beyond what specific skills they bring. That, of course, assumes that they know what they're doing in conducting a BBI and in interpreting the OPQ results. Their choice of the OPQ bodes well, at least, since it's a valid and appropriate test for them to use in evaluating you as a candidate.

Good luck!
posted by DrGail at 7:17 PM on November 22, 2020 [10 favorites]

I'm guessing that the 5 or 6 interviews you've had in your adult life have been for positions of ascending responsibility, not entry level positions like this one, as you say?

I don't know if it's 'corporate BS' or the impersonality that comes with hiring for a position with multiple openings and an unclear mapping between prior experience and success in the position. Are there perhaps also multiple rounds of the interview, and technical questions come in a later round?

Wichienmaat, 'teapot maker' is a standard placeholder job from askamanager.com (and probably elsewhere previously).
posted by batter_my_heart at 9:10 PM on November 22, 2020 [3 favorites]

If DrGail is right about these being behavior-based interviewing questions ("tell me about a time when..."), these are absolutely common and the type of question I would expect at most interviews. At my old firm (corporate law), these were the kinds of questions we were supposed to ask.

Luckily, there's a relatively easy way to prepare crisp answers to these types of questions: the STAR formula. I've been the interviewer and interviewee and found it helpful. At the law firm, we used rubrics based on the STAR formula, and my husband learned the STAR formula in business school, so I think it's very common. Makes info easier to present and digest, so it's helpful for both sides.
posted by saltypup at 12:42 AM on November 23, 2020 [11 favorites]

Yup, totally normal. I am preparing to interview someone tomorrow, and we, as a panel, use these kinds of questions. STAR formula, as mentioned, is very helpful to structure potential answers.
posted by sedimentary_deer at 1:03 AM on November 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

Call me a contrarian, but I think these kinds of questions are bull. They expect you to have canned answers (see STAR preparations above), and producing them at the right moment is supposed to prove you know the lingo or whatever. I had an interviewer try to get around that by asking me several questions in search of a STAR answer rather than one to see how I did once I ran out of pre-prepared answers. I don't think they say a thing about anyone's character. They would do better by just having a real conversation with you.
posted by Violet Blue at 7:12 AM on November 23, 2020 [7 favorites]

Yes these questions are normal. If done well, they're a good thing.

And yes they are formulaic — the candidates that do well are the ones who have figured out what's expected of them and can produce answers which fit the template. But that's a feature not a bug. Work, at least in large companies, is mostly about figuring out what other people expect of you and then doing that thing. Interviewers are doing their job if they reject candidates who can't, or won't, "crack the code".
posted by Klipspringer at 7:33 AM on November 23, 2020 [3 favorites]

Another former hiring manager here who did behavior based interviewing and the STAR method. I think they're of mixed utility...sometimes the job really is very technical and your teapot-specific knowledge is more important than organizational fit, but be that as it may it is the way people are interviewing these days.
posted by assenav at 8:15 AM on November 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

I usually work as a contractor so I interview regularly for jobs that last anywhere from 6 months to 2 years and I HATE behavioral questions so, so much but they are very frequently used. You don't know what questions will be asked so I find myself racking my brain for relevant examples. You can't say that you haven't had that experience or sometimes you can't think of a worthy example on the spot. I tell them what they want to hear (cough - make up something close) based on STAR.

I have noticed that sometimes behavioral questions provide red flags for the problems you'll encounter. "Please tell me about a time you worked with a colleague or manager that does 'troubling/annoying' thing. How did you handle/manage/work around that?" You know you're going to be working with someone difficult.
posted by shoesietart at 9:21 AM on November 23, 2020 [1 favorite]

I hire for technical positions (analytics) and we do a mix of behavioral questions and technical questions. The idea that what someone has put on their resume is sufficient to determine their level of technical competence is amusing and unrealistic for genuinely technical roles. Anybody can put SQL on a resume, but it’s asking technical questions and giving an assessment that separates those with real skill from those who did a SELECT * FROM query once.

So if the job is actually technical (like you have to know a computer language or do server admin) and no one is asking questions to assess your level of skill in the technical areas, that’s at least a yellow flag. But it may be a yellow flag for a heavy-handed HR department with lots of rules about hiring that doesn’t really understand technical recruiting (not that I’ve ever experienced this in real life, ahem), rather than any problems you would experience on the team.

I was trained in DDI’s approach for behavioral interviewing, and I do think it can add value to the process. But I would never do it to the exclusion of technical questions for a technical role.
posted by jeoc at 10:20 AM on November 23, 2020 [1 favorite]