What is a Behavioural Question?
You have likely heard of behavioural questions before — the ‘make or break’ questions interviewers ask to find out how you might respond to a situation. But don’t worry, these questions aren’t nearly as scary as they appear to be.
The most important thing to understand about behavioural questions is this: they exist so your interviewer can gauge how you may complement the current team. These questions are designed to help interviewers find out more about you, how you think, and how you will approach real-world dilemmas in the workplace.
‘But what if I get it wrong?’, you ask. Well, luckily, there isn’t a wrong answer here — because these questions are about you and your thinking pattern. Of course, this doesn’t make these questions any easier to answer — they can get the nerves going — which is why we’re here to help.
Examples of behavioural questions:
Describe a time you have had to deal with an upset customer. What happened, how did you deal with it, and what was the customer's response?
Going on from that… what would you do differently if came across that again?
Can you tell us about a time you have gone above and beyond for a customer?
Tell us about a time when you felt frustrated, angry, or disheartened at work. What was the situation, and how did you feel?
What was the cause of it, was it dealt with, and what was the outcome?
Can you tell us about a time had to solve a problem at work?
Can you tell us what your idea of positive work culture is? What does that look like for you, and what behaviour could we expect in that space from you in this role?
Do these questions feel familiar? That’s because you have probably been asked at least one of them in a past interview. Now — if we look closely at these questions, we can see that these specific questions fall into five groups, with some falling into multiple groups.
Problem-solving
Working in a team
Failure
Work ethic
Stress
Many behavioural questions will fall into these groups, as they help the interviewer see how the candidate behaved in past situations. Before your interview, sit down and think about some examples of how you responded in these types of situations — but remember, one of the most important things to do in an interview is to listen. Jumping the gun on a question — because you have the answer prepared — can come across as though you aren’t listening to the interviewer, so it’s important to take in what the interviewer says and tailor your answer to the question.
Remember — you want to have a RELEVANT response and use SPECIFIC EXAMPLES from your own experience when answering these questions. Walk the interviewer through the situation, and let them know how you handled it, the outcome, and what you would change next time.
