First, a little secret. Behavioral interview questions are the top tool hiring managers use to evaluate soft skills – those important traits such as leadership, teamwork, and prioritization.
More than 60% of hiring managers say that soft skills are critical but tough to find, so no doubt you’ll be getting behavioral interview questions in your next interview.
Top behavioral interview questions – the results are in
In our survey hiring managers ranked adaptability, culture fit and collaboration as the three most important soft skills in candidates.
Let’s look at these three critical skills and the top-rated questions that screen for each.
1. Adaptability
Change is inevitable in any workplace, so it’s no surprise that adaptability is the top soft skill hiring managers look for. Their favorite questions to screen for adaptability are:
- Tell me about a time when you were asked to do something you had never done before.
- Describe a situation in which you embraced a new system, process, technology, or idea at work that was a major departure from the old way of doing things.
How to answer: Come up with one or two significant (and real!) stories from your work life that demonstrate your ability to handle change. Think about times when you went outside your job description or figured out a different way to get things done. Consider examples that demonstrate your problem-solving skills, creativity, resourcefulness, a willingness to learn, and/or a positive attitude in the face of change.
2. Culture fit
Employees who mesh well with a company’s culture are more likely to be productive and stick around, so hiring managers will look for alignment between your values and the company’s. The most popular culture-fit questions are:
- What are the three things that are most important to you in a job?
- Tell me about a time in the last week when you’ve been satisfied, energized, and productive at work. What were you doing?
How to answer: Presumably you’ve already decided that your values do in fact align with your potential employer’s, so focus on the overlap when brainstorming relevant experiences. If autonomy is a big part of the company’s culture, for example, and you work well with little direction, brainstorm experiences that prove that. Again, the goal is to arm yourself with one or two stories that demonstrate you will thrive in the employer’s environment.
3. Collaboration
Almost every job on the planet involves working with others, so having one or two teamwork examples up your sleeve is critical. Here are hiring managers’ leading questions for discerning collaboration skills:
- Give an example of when you had to work with someone who was difficult to get along with.
- Tell me about one of your favorite experiences working with a team and your contribution.
How to answer: Think about both positive and negative experiences in which you’ve worked with others, dealt with conflict, negotiated, and/or compromised. Come up with one or two examples that show your range of playing nice, holding your ground, and working in a team to get things done.
You’re on a roll, but don’t stop there.
These three themes should help focus your efforts, but be the savvy candidate who further researches the traits your specific employer is looking for.
That means reading the job description carefully and talking to people who know the role to identify the particular skills you’ll need and the challenges you’ll face. Then come up with examples from your past to prove that you have what it takes. If ‘lead a team’ is in the job description, you’d be wise to have a story in your back pocket that demonstrates your leadership skills.
Make sure your answers have 3 key elements.
Regardless of topic, great answers to behavioral interview questions have substance, structure and style.
Substance. Your answers can only come from your memory, so start by jotting down recent projects and events at work. Consider major accomplishments, conflicts, and challenges along with your role in them. Can any of those experiences fit into an ‘adaptability’ story? A ‘collaboration’ story? Invest in racking your brain for the richest examples so you can easily adapt your answers depending on the phrasing of the question.
Structure. With behavioral interview questions, your task is simply to tell stories from your past that prove you have the skill your interviewer is after. Stories need a beginning, middle and end. The beginning explains the situation or problem you were in, the middle addresses the actions you took, and the end reveals the results and what you learned. You want to include enough details to keep it interesting, but nothing extraneous. Think one-minute answers, not five-minute.
Style. While your primary goal is to prove you have a particular skill, speaking with confidence, humility, and even humor can set you apart from other candidates. The best ways to polish your answers are to practice, practice, and practice some more, and take the time to think before you respond.
Use this triple ‘S’ framework to prepare your adaptability, culture fit, and collaboration stories, along with stories for key traits specific to the job, and that behavioral interview will be a breeze.
