If you are charged with hiring a team for yourself or for your clients, be sure to include behavioral questions during the interview. When I’m recruiting, I never fail to include behavioral questions. I truly value the importance of incorporating both behavioral and traditional questions, to ensure the candidate will make a great cultural fit. So what are behavioral questions and why are they useful?

What are Behavioral interview questions?

These are questions that allow you to discern how a candidate has actually responded in very specific situations. You can ask how they responded when a policy they did not agree with was past down by their previous manager. You can ask how they dealt with a difficult customer in the past. These are behavioral questions, they delve a bit deeper than the traditional: “What would you do?” Instead you’re asking: “What did you do?”

Why are Behavioral questions important?

Behavioral questions allow you to understand the thought process of the candidate and why they act or “behave” the way they do in certain situations. It’s also an indicator of how they’ll act with your clients or customers. Using the information can help you better determine if the candidate fits in with the company culture for which your hiring.

Here are some additional tips:

• Always ask follow-up questions. I always ask if the candidate would have done anything differently. This allows me to gauge whether or not they still believe their course of action was correct and/or whether or not, they have since changed their thought process on a particular subject or event.
• Make sure the candidate feels comfortable. When a candidate feels comfortable, they are more apt to be open and honest. You don’t want a candidate providing answers out of fear. You want to understand how they truly think. This will help you both in the hiring process.

This is Shilonda Downing, signing out for Virtual Work Team LLC!