Why do hiring managers do behavioral interviews?

A behavioral interview is a technique used by many hiring managers to help evaluate a candidate's future performance. Not everything throughout the day would be perfect. Behavioral interviews cover the types of questions where manager would like to see how employees would react for certain situations. During the day sometimes stressful situations might have different reactions from each individual and managers would like to know how employees react in general.

What is STAR format?

Some of the companies started to look at STAR format to answer behavioral interview questions. But what is essentially a STAR format? Let's look at the details of the STAR format:

S = Situation Situation: find and describe a situation that: find and describe a situation that ties into the interview question at hand.

T = Task: further delineate a specific task you had: further delineate a specific task you had to complete in this situation.

A = Action (s Action (s): discuss the approach you took to): discuss the approach you took to deal with the task, breaking down your actions one deal with the task, breaking down your actions one by one.

R = Result: conclude be describing specific, concrete outcomes of your actions; making concrete outcomes of your actions.

This format will give you a great idea how to answer any upcoming questions during the behavioral interview session.

Some tips for the behavioral interviews

There is no person out there who can answer the questions perfectly. In any of these questions there is no right or wrong answer. Consider answering behavioral questions from your own experiences. Experience is your biggest ally here. If you are feeling anxious, don't worry! This means you care about getting the job. Most candidates also feel the same way.

A good story will always increase your changes of landing the job.

Some questions and example answers

Let's go over some the questions and example answers and let's explore why would a hiring manager ask these types of questions.

How do you keep up with the technology?

Sometimes not all questions need to follow up a STAR format. Here in this example, the hiring manager wants to know about you, see your interest towards technological advancements and how do you keep up with it. An example answer would be sharing what you would be doing in course of your following up technological advancements:

1. Read the latest research reports
2. Follow tech news
3. Get new opportunities delivered to your inbox
4. Know what’s trending in the open-source community
5. Divide, share, and conquer knowledge gathering
6. Getting trainings, watching courses, doing coding on weekends, extra time

Explain a technical project?

The question here is being asked from a hiring manager perspective to understand to see if you can clearly explain yourself to your peers, your stakeholders and other parts within the organization. Also this question would help to understand what are the candidates interests within a technical project. This question will also help to understand if the candidate has experience will accommodate the positions requirements.

Example Answer:

"Marketing Cloud is the most comprehensive, integrated marketing solution available to launch cross-channel marketing programs and unify all prospect and customer marketing signals in a single view. This solution helps generate a higher return on digital marketing investments, create customer loyalty through superior campaign performance, and unlock real-time performance decisions during critical campaign cycles.

During my past experiences working at Marketing Cloud, I have worked on the backend email engine where I had developed the core functions of the email sending service and added features around the field merge engine."

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

The intention of this question here again to understand candidates interest. If the candidate joins the organization, would that candidate pursue engineering or would like to move management or do something else? This is a great question to understand where candidate would like to do within 5 years within the organization. If the expectation from a hiring manager perspective if the hiring manager is looking for a candidate with a long term relationship, this would be a good question to ask. Here is an example answer:

"Mastering the role of [insert job title you’re interviewing for]. I intend to immerse myself in the position, understand the areas and processes that can be improved upon and get to know the ins and outs of the business. I love to look for opportunities to make the department as efficient as possible."

So far we covered some questions that are not STAR format. Here are some questions you can address with the STAR format.

Tell me about a mistake you made and what you learned from it?

A hiring manager here would like to learn what happens if you made a mistake then if you took an action to fix or not. Essentially everybody makes mistakes and communication is key. Also learning from mistakes is essential. Let's take a look at an example answer:

"I’m the kind of person who tries to learn and grow from every mistake. Years ago, a team I was working on failed to land a sale, and we were told it had to do in part with our ineffective visuals. Over the next six months, I spent much of my free time learning how to use various software programs to create enticing visual presentations. Since then, I’ve been continuously praised for my visuals in meetings and sales pitches."

This example gives a great overview learning from mistakes and taking action as a result. The answer is also in STAR format where the situation is described, task is shared, action is described and result of it is shared within the answer.

S: Years ago, a team I was working on failed to land a sale, and we were told it had to do in part with our ineffective visuals.

T: Improve the ineffective visuals.

A: Over the next six months, I spent much of my free time learning how to use various software programs to create enticing visual presentations.

R: Since then, I’ve been continuously praised for my visuals in meetings and sales pitches.

Tell me about a time you had multiple responsibilities to manage. How did you respond to this situation?

This is another question where the hiring manager is looking what would you do if you had multiple assignments but no option to focus on them. Sometimes stressful situations might happen within organizations. The hiring manager would like to understand how the candidate perform in these kinds of situations. Here is the example answer:

"I was in a situation at my previous job where I was organizing a plan of action for my team, and the deadline was rapidly approaching. My manager expressed that she was busy with several projects at the time and couldn't respond to my emails until two to three days later. I was assigned to complete the implementation on time I had assigned. Rather than getting frustrated, I asked my team members for input, and we created a fully formed plan that we then presented to my manager, who approved it immediately."

If we dissect the answer in STAR format, situation was shared in the beginning first sentence and the task was given to finish the task on time. Action wise the candidate decided to rather than getting frustrated, the candidate reached out to the team members for input and came up with a plan. As a result, the project was presented to the manager and the manager approved it immediately.

S: I was in a situation at my previous job where I was organizing a plan of action for my team, and the deadline was rapidly approaching.

T: I was assigned to complete the implementation on time I had assigned.

A: Rather than getting frustrated, I asked my team members for input, and we created a fully formed plan.

R: We presented the plan to my manager and my manager approved it immediately.

Conclusion

Every interview can have different formats and setups and there are not right or wrong answers on each question. The behavioral interview is all about getting to know about the candidate and understanding the needs for the position. Try to answer questions without anxiety and keep calm. The more practice you'll have the better it will get. Good luck interviewing.

If you want to listen more about behavioral interviewing on Twitter Space, please see this link: twitter.com/i/spaces/1ynJOZVwdkrGR?s=20.