There are two aspects of succeeding in a job. You must have the technical skills, education and experience needed to perform the job (what you do). But equally important are the behavioral attributes that impact ‘how’ you do your job. Organizations often identify the behavioral attributes that distinguish high-performing employees from average-performing employees. These distinguishing attributes are called competencies.
Behavior-based interviewing is often used in job interviews. It does not replace questions about technical qualifications or experience. Rather, it gives the job candidate an opportunity to demonstrate their potential to succeed in the new job by providing specific examples of how they handled similar situations in the past. This historical focus is the hallmark of a behavior-based interview. The interview questions are constructed to encourage this response through stories of past experiences, actions and outcomes. This is based on the premise that the best predictor of future performance is past performance.
Before you begin this assignment, watch my recorded lecture (Talent Management) and the You Tube video published by Stanford Graduate School of Business (How to Conduct Interviews). Then, I’d like you to develop a competency-based interview guide based on a job you know well – your own.
Other options:
• If you are not currently employed, you may use a job you’ve had in the past.
• If you’ve never had full-time employment:
o You may use your role in a student group or association
o You may select a job you want after graduation. You will have to do some internet research to find job descriptions for this job so that you understand both the technical/educational requirements and the behavioral competencies.
Once you decide on the job you will use as the basis for your interview, follow these steps:
- Whether you are using your current job or one of the other options, pretend that you have been promoted and you will now be one of three individuals responsible to select the next incumbent (your replacement).
- Review the published job description for this job/role.
- Note any required education, technical skills, licenses, etc.
- Review the KSA’s (Key skills and abilities) for the job.
- Think about the behaviors (competencies) required to perform at a high level in this job. These are differentiators among incumbents who appear ‘equal’ in education, skills, etc. and are generally behavior-based actions – things that are observable by others. If your organization has a set of published leadership competencies – you may use these. Otherwise, review M5-2A Competency List.
- Select five (5) competencies you believe are differentiators between low-average-high performers. You are most interested in high performers.
- You may want to review M5-2b Sample Interview Guide, to see an interview that I’ve drafted.
- Use the M2c Interview Guide Template that follows to create an interview.
You are not expected to conduct these interviews, so you will have ‘blank areas’ where the interviewer’s notes would be taken. The purpose of this exercise is to give you experience in developing:
• targeted, open-ended questions
• questions based on behavioral competencies
• questions designed to understand the candidate’s lived or past experience – these are not hypothetical or ‘what if’ questions
Sample Solution