When assessing candidates for a critical position, as a recruiter, you must ask the right behavioral recruitment questions in order to understand their likely future behaviour in the workplace. This is the most important part of any interview because the goal is to understand the candidates, how they approach real-life problems, and whether or not they complement the current team.
When you are interviewing a candidate, you must remember that the answer they are delivering is a reflection of their actual personality. As there is no chance of preparing for these behavioral recruitment questions, no matter how much they rehearse beforehand, you will get the actual characteristics data immediately. Let’s dive in and see why and how behavioral recruitment questions can play a vital role in your recruitment process.
Why Do Behavioral Recruitment Questions Matter In The First Place?
A behavioral assessment session is the toughest part of a recruitment process. Candidates are to answer hypothetical situations that they have created using real-life situations or facts. As you need to decide whether the person possesses the qualities you seek in your next hire.
Several research studies reveal that behavioral assessment questions during an interview can bring out a person’s ability to work collaboratively, make adjustments, and other skills. We have compiled a list of behavioral recruitment questions below based on different categories.
Around 60% of managers state that screening for behavioral assessment is difficult to understand the soft skills of the candidates. Based on their priorities, there are 6 categories of assessment questions that you can ask.
Adaptability Assessment Of Candidates
In this ever-changing economic world, every business is constantly changing and adapting every now and then. That’s why almost every company wants to have an adaptive team that will adjust to any situation. To assess the prospective candidates’ adaptability, you can ask the following questions:
- Describe an experience at work in which you adopted a new framework, procedure, technology, or even an idea that was a stark change from the old way of doing things.
- Tell me about a time you were asked to do something you’d never done before. What were your thoughts? What have you discovered?
- Consider a time when you were given a task that was not part of your job description. How did you deal with the situation? What was the end result?
- Describe a time when you had to change your approach to deal with a difficult situation. How did you handle it?
- How did you adapt to another colleague’s working style to get done with the project or task? Did you fulfill the objectives?
As you can see, these questions are giving hypothetical scenarios to the candidates where they will be sharing their own experiences based on the given situation. Their answers will determine if they have the capabilities to adapt to new processes, frameworks, ideas, or even the working styles of coworkers.
Cultural Fit Assessment Of Candidates
The most essential behavioral recruitment questions should address the cultural fit of any candidate. When you are looking for a new member to your team, besides their experience, qualifications, and interpersonal skills, you need to see if they actually fit the unique work culture of your organization or not.
Most hiring managers think that this cultural fit assessment is important for any organization. To assess if the candidate is culturally fit for your organization, you can ask the following questions:
- What are the three most important aspects of your job?
- Tell me about a time at work when you were pleased, enthused, and productive. What were you up to?
- What is the most intriguing aspect of you that isn’t on your resume?
- What drew you to our company over others?
- What is the most common misconception your work colleagues have had about you, and why do they believe it?
Collaboration Compatibility Of Candidates
Team collaboration is also essential for any team to have because it directly impacts the outcome of any project or task. When you have a team that syncs with each other the most, the outcome becomes more productive. So to ensure the compatibility of prospective candidates, you can make these behavioral recruitment questions like the below:
- Tell me about a time when you were communicating with someone and they didn’t understand what you were saying. What exactly did you do?
- Give a description of a time when you needed to collaborate with someone with whom you had a difficult time getting along with. How did you deal with that individual?
- Tell us about one of your favorite teamwork experiences and how you contributed to it.
- Can you tell me about a time when a project’s direction radically changed at the last moment? What exactly did you do?
- Define the perfect partner or supervisor you’ve ever worked with. What aspect of their management style piqued your interest?
Testify Leadership Qualities Of Candidates
Whether the roles are entry-level or executive, companies look for candidates who have leadership qualities. Leaders can instinctively grow a company with their wits and creative solutions while also guiding the team towards a fruitful decision.
Their qualities may include skill development tendency, fearless decision-making quality, feedback enthusiast, dynamic personality, and of course compatible intelligence. To find out these qualities in one person, you must ask the right behavioral recruitment questionsas we have gathered some.
- Think of a time when something important went wrong at work. What was your contribution? What was the consequence?
- Can you describe a situation when you needed to convince someone to see things your way? What did you do to convince the person? What was the ultimate result?
- Tell me about the most difficult choice you’ve had to consider making in the last 6 months?
- Describe the time when you led a team for any project. What did others think of you? Did they actually follow you through the process?
- Did you ever “sell” any idea to your work colleagues? How did you do that? Did they accept your proposal?
Growth Potentiality Of Candidates
Every company tends to incorporate overall growth when it comes to company benefits. That’s why they seek employees who will also grow with the company. It will make the company even stronger in terms of productivity.
According to research, your company needs to spend more money to replace any employee. Instead, you can simply hire candidates who have growth potential overall. We have gathered some popular behavioral recruitment questions that will help you to assess the growth potentiality of candidates easily:
- Do you remember a time when your team lead was absent and you needed to handle the situation? How did you respond as a leader in this circumstance?
- Describe a time when you actively volunteered to expand your knowledge or skill without even being told.
- What would compel you to leave your current position?
- What is the most important professional goal you’ve ever attained?
Assess Prioritization Of Candidates
All the employees have to juggle between tasks and deadlines all the time. So learning how to prioritize tasks is important for anyone. You need to recruit someone who can decide which tasks can wait and which need immediate attention.
Employing someone who is unable to do this correctly means that important deadlines and project timelines may slip through the net, inevitably harming your company. Ask these below behavioral assessment questions to your candidates and see how they prioritize their tasks.
- How do you decide how much time is appropriate for a task?
- Explain a time in your work life when you were frustrated or overwhelmed. How did you deal with it?
- When did you need to juggle between tasks last time? What methods did you use to manage your time? What was the outcome?
- Give a description of a time when you successfully devolved a critical task.
- Tell us about a project that you worked on where you might have used methods to organize and schedule tasks?
Bonus: Behavioral Recruitment Questions To Measure Creativity
Aninterview session can be interesting if you can include some interesting questions in your question set. So, to spice things up, you can ask these questions during the interview that will eventually reveal a lot about your candidates. Here are some of the most asked questions:
- What are your strongest and weakest traits?
- What was the last thing that you have learned recently?
- On a scale of 1 to 10, how weird are you?
- Tell us about a time when you were a kid, who did you want to be?
How To Get Your Desired Answers From The Candidates?
Even though you might be asking the right behavioral recruitment questions to your candidates, you are not getting the right answers yet. It might happen if you do not pursue the right approach. Here are some tips to get the desired answers so that the recruitment process goes smoothly.
1. Utilize The S.T.A.R System: S.T.A.R. system represents the situation, task, action, and results that you must seek in your candidate’s answers. When you have asked something, you need to see if they are explaining each of these to make you convinced to believe their answers. In that way, you will also testify to their convincing power which will come in handy in the future.
2. Ignore Hypothetical Answers: Of course, you can ask hypothetical questions to your candidates but when you are getting replies, you must pay attention to their answers that must not be hypothetical. Instead, they are supposed to give real-life examples to your questions all the time.
3. Give Sufficient Time: You need to be patient while dealing with candidates in a recruitment process. You need to give enough time so that they can think about the question and come up with a smart reply. In that case, you need to follow up with their responses as well to dig deep into the situation.
