Where do you see yourself in Five years? Breaking down Behavioral Event Interviews

The Behavioral Event Interview (BEI)^[1] is a structured interview technique for selection interviews. It assesses past behavior and experiences to predict future performance and suitability for a particular position or job.

Behavioral Interviews focus on past behaviors in challenging situations to understand a candidate's job competencies.

Significant aspects of a Behavioral Event Interview include:

1. Structured Questions 🗂️

The interview often starts with this question:

Interviewer: "Tell me about a challenge you faced in the last 18 months where you felt particularly effective. Please describe the situation, what led you to it, and how you felt, thought, and acted to meet the challenge. Describe these factors in detail."

The candidate is encouraged to state the behaviors, thoughts, and feelings in their response to the challenge. This helps identify associated competencies.

Candidate: "My boss told me to onboard ten new vendors in our content creation pipeline in 6 months. We had onboarded 3 in the past year, and this was a huge challenge that I gladly accepted. I felt energized and believed this would enable the organization to get great results.

I knew this was possible and immediately started researching popular vendor marketplaces, including IndiaMart. I then…."

Here we identify competencies related to achievement orientation (I felt energized). We note that the candidate is driven by challenge and organizational commitment (enabling the organization to get great results).

2. Past Behavior Prediction 🔮

The underlying principle of the BEI is that past behavior is a good predictor of future behavior. By analyzing how a candidate has behaved in certain situations, the interviewer can make valid judgments about their future job performance.

The general rule is that if the candidate has not talked about certain competencies in his narratives and stories, they are simply absent.

3. Probing with Follow-Ups 🔎

Interviewers often probe further into a candidate's responses to gain a deeper understanding of their thought processes, decision-making, and the impact of their thoughts, feelings, and actions. This also helps weed out imaginative or fake stories.

Candidate: "We achieved the impossible"

This doesn't help a BEI interviewer identify or quantify any competencies. Therefore, you will likely have a follow-up question:

Interviewer: "What was the impossible?"

This question probes the situation. Further questions like "What was your role in this challenge? What were you thinking at this time?" explore the thinking and feelings of the candidate, which are the intent of the behavior (Intent is crucial to have repeatable behaviors).

4. Competency Assessment 📊

If a job needs planning and communication skills, the interviewer will look for these skills in your story.

But the interviewer will not give hints like: "Tell me a time when you communicated well or planned with meticulous care."

These are leading questions. The candidates may then discuss skills and competencies that would otherwise not be discussed. This could mean that we gather competencies not frequently used by the candidate.

A possible interaction would be:

Candidate: "I negotiated with 60 vendors in July, asking for potential discounts."
Interviewer: "Please walk me through the negotiations with the vendors."

5. Scoring and Evaluation 🎯

Interviewers often use a competency framework and competency dictionary connected to the job role being interviewed for.

This helps them score candidate responses on predetermined criteria or competencies, offering a highly objective and comparative assessment of candidates.

Candidate 1: I accepted the challenge of onboarding ten new vendors. 😊

Candidate 2: I decided to onboard ten new vendors. 🤯

The second example scores higher on the achievement orientation scale due to its increased complexity.

---

The Behavioral Event Interview is a reliable template for assessing a candidate's fitness for a job. It uncovers examples of a candidate's abilities from real-life experiences rather than relying on hypothetical questions and answers.

We wish you all the best for your next interview. You can view more content about Behavioral Event Interviews here:
https://interviewready.io/learn/behavioural-interview-course/

[1] Primarily developed by Dr. David McClelland, a Professor at Harvard Business School, and later by Dr. Richard Boyatzis from Weatherhead School of Business in Case Western University at Cleveland and Lyle Spencer Jr.