Hiring should never be based on skills alone. While obviously important, so many nuances dictate how successful someone will be when applying their skills.
How do they approach problems? How do they communicate? What kind of values do they hold when it comes to their work?
And this is where behavioral interview questions are so valuable. Here I'll share my knowledge and best practices to help you ask the most relevant questions for your org and dig deeper into the answers.
What Are Behavioral Interview Questions?
Behavioral interview questions are designed to assess how a candidate has handled specific situations previously. These questions focus on skills, behaviors, and qualities relevant to the job, usually phrased to prompt the candidate to provide examples of their past behavior.
They often start with phrases like "Tell me about a time when..." or "Give an example of...". The goal is to predict future performance in your organization based on past actions.
Why Behavioral Interview Questions Are Useful
Behavioral interview questions are useful because they provide insight into how a candidate has applied their skills and handled real-life situations—a strong predictor of their future behavior in similar scenarios.
This approach helps interviewers assess the cultural fit of candidates as expressed in their approach to problem-solving, interpersonal skills, and adaptability.
By focusing on past experiences, employers can better gauge whether a candidate's qualities align with the job requirements and company culture.
30 Behavioral Interview Questions
Here are 30 behavioral interview questions categorized by common competencies and some ideas for specific follow-ups:
1. Problem-solving and critical thinking
- Tell me about a time you faced an unexpected challenge. How did you handle it?
- Why did it catch you unawares?
- How, if at all, did this impact future work?
- Describe a situation where you had to make a quick decision with limited information.
- How did you balance the risk?
- Give an example of a problem you solved that required creative thinking.
- Why was that a particularly creative way of solving the problem?
- Can you describe a time when you identified a problem before it became serious?
- What gave you the indication that this might eventually be a serious problem?
- How did you get the buy-in to address this vs. other problems?
- Tell me about a time you had to analyze complex information to make a recommendation to a stakeholder who is not an expert.
- How did you adapt your communication?
- How did you ensure they understood your recommendation and the pros and cons?
2. Teamwork and collaboration
- Describe a situation where you had to work closely with a team to complete a challenging project.
- What was challenging about it?
- How did you make sure the team was on the same page?
- Tell me about a time when you disagreed with a team member. How did you resolve it?
- What was their position?
- Why was it different to yours?
- Give an example of when you supported a teammate who was struggling.
- How did you recognize the person was struggling?
- How did you identify the underlying source of the struggles? (e.g. skills, capacity, or personal issues)
- What did you do to make sure they level up?
- Can you provide an example of how you helped build a positive team culture?
- How did you recognize the gap (if any)?
- What did you do to ensure you understood what constitutes a positive team culture for your company?
- How did you collaborate with the team to build momentum?
- Share a time when you had to work with someone with a different work style than yours.
- How did you find a common ground?
3. Communication
- Tell me about a time when you had to explain a complex concept to someone unfamiliar with the topic.
- How did you adapt your communication?
- How did you make sure you were understood?
- Give an example of a situation where your communication skills made a difference.
- Why was this example so significant to you?
- Describe a time when you had to persuade someone to see things your way.
- How did you approach the persuasion?
- How did your own views change (if at all)?
- Can you share an experience where listening to others helped you address a problem?
- In what ways did this person communicate so that you found it compelling to listen to them?
- Did you consider any other points of view, why did you not follow them or why did you follow them?
- Tell me about a time you had to give constructive feedback to a coworker.
- Why was it important to give this feedback?
- How did you support the person afterward?
- Tell me about the most effective constructive feedback you have received.
- How was it delivered?
- What was challenging to hear?
- How did you adapt?
4. Leadership
- Give an example of when you took the lead on a project.
- Why did you take the lead?
- How did you round up all points of view?
- Describe a situation where you had to motivate others to achieve a goal.
- If applicable, how did you modify your approach based on the person?
- What did you do to anchor people to the goal?
- Tell me about a time you delegated tasks effectively.
- How did you decide what to delegate?
- What did you keep and why?
- How did you follow up with the person you delegated things to?
- Share an example of a situation where you had to manage conflict within your team.
- How did you balance the views?
- Can you describe a time you made a difficult decision as a leader?
- What made that decision so difficult?
5. Adaptability and flexibility
- Tell me about a time when you had to adapt to a significant change at work.
- What was challenging about that change?
- Who did that change impact?
- Why was it implemented?
- Describe a situation where you had to adjust your approach to complete a task successfully.
- When did you recognize you had to change your approach?
- Give an example of when you had to learn something new quickly.
- How did you prioritize what to learn now vs later?
- What is your strategy to pick things up quickly?
- Share an experience where you successfully managed a sudden change in priorities.
- Why was the change needed?
- How did you understand you successfully adapted?
- Tell me about a time you had to work in an environment that was constantly changing.
- What did you do to stay up to date with all the changes?
- How did you approach shifting your priorities?
6. Time management and organization
- Give an example of how you prioritized your tasks during a busy period.
- How did you make sure that the team understood your prioritization?
- How did the busy period/time crunch affect your normal prioritization approach?
- Describe a situation where you missed a deadline. What happened and how did you handle it?
- What did you do to minimize damage?
- How did you manage expectations?
- Tell me about a time you had to manage multiple projects at once.
- How did you approach prioritizing?
- Share an experience where your planning skills helped you meet a tight deadline.
- What made your planning skills stand out compared to others in the team?
- Describe a time when you had to adjust your work schedule to meet a goal.
- What was the challenge of this goal?
- Why did you have to adjust? How?
How To Decide Which Questions To Ask
While some behavioral-style questions can be generally applicable, you don’t possess an infinite amount of time and therefore need to be selective!
The best way to decide what to prioritize is by looking at your company values.
If, for example, you prioritize people with a high bias for action and experimentation, you’ll want to ask questions to determine this.
Part of the questions you ask should be dictated by the company values. This ensures that people across different teams hold compatible values and therefore behaviors towards work.
However, another part will be informed by the specific role. This is a primary reason it’s important to have clear job specs so you know what you're looking for and what success looks like.
For example, if you’re looking for a new People Partner who is great with the operations side, check in with their project management skills in a way that fits with the company.
If, however, you’re looking for a People Partner to enact a few large changes, then you’d want to assess their change management and soft skills and how they can adapt those to fit your company values.
As you can see, behavioral style questions can actually be very powerful in assessing skills and behaviors.
Common values and what you can ask about
Bias for action
- Tell me about a time when you had to make a decision without having all the facts.
- Why were the facts not available to you?
- Why was the decision so time-critical?
- What was your approach?
- How did you weigh the facts you did have in terms of importance?
Helping each other
- Give me an example of when you had to help a team member who was struggling.
- How did you realize they were struggling?
- How did you approach offering your help?
- What feedback did you give them?
- How did you support them going forward?
Trust
- Please describe a situation where you had to regain trust with a stakeholder.
- How was the trust lost?
- How did you approach regaining trust?
- What was the outcome?
Ownership
- Describe a situation where you had to step over and above your role/station?
- Why was it necessary?
- What was that action over and above?
Innovation/resourcefulness
- Tell me about a time you had to deliver an ambitious project using a creative solution (or limited resources for resourcefulness).
- How is that creative compared to the standard?
- What was ambitious about the project?
Volume Vs Depth
Broadly, there are two schools of thought regarding behavioral style questions: 1) covering as many examples as possible or 2) going into as much depth as possible by asking follow-up questions about fewer examples.
Volume example
- Give me 3 examples of where you had to handle difficult communications, what was the outcome?
- OR “Give me an example of a situation where you had to give up short-term gains for longer-term relationships” followed by “Give me another example”.
I am not a big fan of this approach for three reasons.
- Not applicable to everyone e.g. it’s unlikely that junior candidates will have many examples to give you.
- Limited time for each question means you can’t go in-depth to understand the why and uncover true expertise.
- You may come across like you’re fishing for a specific answer versus listening to the person properly and looking to understand them.
Depth example
- Give me an example of where you had to handle difficult communications with a stakeholder.
- Who was the stakeholder?
- What was the previous relationship you had before this situation? What changed?
- How did you approach the situation?
- What was your goal? What was their goal?
- What was the outcome?
- Why did you approach the situation this way vs any other way?
I prefer this method for three reasons:
- It helps you to drill into their answers and determine whether people understood and thought through what they did.
- You can still get valuable insights from candidates who have fewer examples.
- It allows you to ask more specific questions that match your situation or values versus going very generic to try and catch as many examples as possible (this method of interviewing is also known as peeling the onion).
How To Peel The Onion
Peeling the onion is the interviewing technique of asking the right follow-up questions that get to the core of the skills and behaviors you’re looking for.
Ultimately, this helps you uncover how the person developed these skills and behaviors and whether they really have them or if they’re just trying to say what you want to hear.
For each situation there will be some specific follow-ups, so it’s always helpful to have a question bank and think about appropriate follow-ups beforehand.
However, if you’re stuck, here’s a checklist to make sure you have fully understood each example:
- How they approached the situation.
- What kind of context/questions/information did they seek out? From whom and how?
- Who were they working with/collaborating with?
- How did they manage those stakeholder relationships?
- How did they ensure the project was on track and everyone was updated?
- What did they do to find the way forward?
- Why did they do this specific route/way of solving the problem?
- What other ways did they consider? Why not those?
- What was the outcome?
- What was the impact on their work/team/company in the long term, if any?
Store these in your applicant tracking system or similar!
Sequencing the questions
The skill you’ll eventually develop is knowing when to ask which follow-up questions.
One thing to note is that sometimes asking too specific a follow-up can give too much of a hint into what you’re looking for.
For example, if you ask them about managing a team conflict and instantly follow up with “How did you balance the views?” it is obvious that you are looking for someone who can balance the views.
So, my advice is to start with broader follow-ups. With the example above, I’d start with “What was the conflict? What happened before you got involved? How did you approach understanding the context?”.
One of the best and most insightful interviewers I’ve known was at Twitch.
He would ask one overarching behavioral question about a time when they exemplified a company value (we used to assign values to each interviewer) at the beginning of the 45-minute interview and managed to get so much insight from it by asking follow-ups.
He made it so that the follow-ups flowed like a conversation and went from broad to highly specific in that order.
Every candidate I spoke to found it either really challenging or really enjoyable, so it is polarizing, but generally the ones who enjoyed “nerding out” about their work ended up doing the best in their jobs.
*Disclaimer: this only applies for those roles at that specific company, “nerding out” is not a universal predictor of performance.*
Closing Thoughts
Mastering behavioral interviewing is a skill like any other and you may need to do many interviews to truly become an expert.
However, it’s worth the effort as skills alone are not a complete predictor of performance.
Someone who was a great performer in a specific environment and company may not be able to replicate that performance at your org if their way of working and values don’t align.
However, if you’re not prepared to go in-depth into the person’s experience, you may fall into one of two traps: 1) either being easily impressed by people who are only saying the things you want to hear or 2) falling for the personality fit trap.
Best of luck in your search and if you have any questions feel free to reach out. For a more general guide to interviewing, check out my article on how to interview someone.
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