Behavioral Interviewing is Not Enough

One hiring technique that has recently become very popular is the structured behavioral interview. The principle behind the technique is the belief that the best indicator of future behavior is past behavior. Behavioral interviewing involves asking a series of questions designed to get the candidate to talk about how he or she handled certain situations in the past.

Many formalize this into a formula, such as “STAR” (ask about a past Situation/Task related to a trait – such as flexibility, then elicit the candidate’’s past Action, and the Results of that action). While this style of interviewing is a good start for new managers, there are a few problems with it.

• The trait that is used as the basis for behavioral interviewing is often not specific to success in the job itself. Narratives about previous experiences are without a contextual basis in the success predictors for your specific position. In other words, it tells you what a candidate has done in the past (assuming that the narrative is to some degree even based on their own experience), but not about what he or she can do or is motivated to do.


• Ungrounded behavioral interviewing doesn’t measure contextual performance. It does not give any indication of the fit between the candidate, the performance indicators for success in that position, and the environment within which the candidate must be able to function.


• A simple search on your favorite search engine will show you the thousands of pages that tell candidates how to prepare for general behavioral interviewing. Experienced, practiced candidates can often present a strong “front appearance” that in no way predicts success in any endeavor other than interviewing.

Harvard Business Review estimates that 80% of costly turnover is caused by bad hiring decisions. More costly still may be maintaining a “C-player” (which may include mistakes, missed opportunities, and disruption) where there could have been active contribution from an “A-Player.” The fact is, you only have a 14% chance of accurately predicting the future performance of a job candidate from an interview alone. There is also a very good chance that some of the information you collect from the application, resume or even from references will be false or misleading. Research shows that different elements of the hiring process improve the odds of effective job success prediction.

We will help you to select and implement assessments that target strengths and weaknesses in comparision to those of the position itself rather than to an intangible ideal. Critical areas with scores that deviate from pre-established norms define the appropriate questions to ask. The questions are specific to that individual’’s characteristics as they relate to the traits of the specific position and the context of that position in the working environment of the department or team. We can even indicate what specific questions you should ask their references. When you apply our assessments to your pre-employment process, you will greatly increase your odds of finding and hiring successful, productive and competent employees.

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