Behavioral interview
A behavioral interview is a job interview that elicits accounts of candidates’ past actions and experiences to assess job-related behavior and competencies.
Interview Speak
A job interview format that asks candidates to describe specific past actions or experiences to assess job-related behavior and competencies.
- How it is used
- Uses specific past experiences to assess job-related behavior and competencies during interviews.
- How deep it goes
- Defines behavioral interviews and distinguishes depth questions from breadth questions, but does not provide a complete answer framework.
- Examples
- Uses “Tell me about a time when” prompts, personal-situation questions, and a recruiter’s casual-conversation interview.
- What you can do after
- Apply it by giving one relevant, detailed past example when asked to describe a situation.
Tech Startup Toolkit
A behavioral interview is an interview method that elicits accounts of a candidate's past actions and experiences to assess how they may perform in relevant future situations.
- How it is used
- Uses open-ended stories to assess how candidates think, work, collaborate, and handle stress or disappointment.
- How deep it goes
- Develops question patterns, follow-up conversation, speaking-time guidance, and objective debriefing, while stopping short of workday simulation.
- Examples
- Uses stories about programs, bugs, collaboration, webinars, and bosses to reveal work habits and judgment.
- What you can do after
- Evaluate candidates by eliciting detailed work stories and comparing objective evidence before sharing summary judgments.
Read how Tech Startup Toolkit explains behavioral interview →
Related concepts
- open-ended questionhas part · An open-ended question invites a free-form response rather than selection from predetermined alternatives or a narrowly specified answer.
- interview questionkind of · An interview question is a question posed during an interview to elicit information or evaluate a participant’s knowledge, experience, judgment, or suitability.
- simulationcontrasts with · A simulation is a modeled or controlled enactment of a system, process, or scenario used to examine or reproduce behavior under specified conditions.
- demonstrationuses · A demonstration is an individual example or data instance that illustrates a task, expected behavior, or an input-output relationship.
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