08/ 03/ 2004
by Tamara E. Holmes
Hiring the right employees to do the job is crucial for all small-business owners, and developing a successful interviewing technique can be the difference between discovering a star employee and creating a perennial headache.
One method of interviewing that many human-resource professionals are turning to is behavioral-event interviewing, which focuses not so much on the skills or knowledge base of potential employees, but rather on how they have used those skills and knowledge in the past.
Under the technique's premise, it is not enough to know that a prospective employee is fluent in Spanish. Instead, you would want to find out how the person has used his or her bilingual capabilities in the past.
The premise behind behavioral-event interviewing is that past behavior predicts future performance. Just as a credit report is used to predict how a loan applicant will handle money in the future, examples of past accomplishments and behaviors can help hiring managers get an idea of how a potential employee will perform in the future.
Unlike interviewing techniques that focus on hypothetical situations and ask applicants what they would do in a given situation, behavioral event interviewing focuses on what applicants have done. The danger of using hypothetical situations to gauge an applicant's ability to handle the job is that the applicant is better able to give the answers he or she thinks you want to hear. Also, applicants might want to believe that they would act in a certain manner when, in reality, they would not.
When coming up with questions for the interview, consider the way each is phrased. You'll want to use open-ended questions that require more than a "yes" or "no" answer.
For example, starting a question off with the phrase "Tell me about a time when…" prompts the applicant not only to describe a situation that fits your criteria, but also to walk you through the resolution of the situation. Such a discourse not only allows you to hear about the situation, but it forces the applicant to talk more. As a result, you're better able to gauge his or her communication skills, which can also help you make your hiring decision.
Another common phrase used to begin a behavioral-event interview question is "Give me an example of…" Again, such questions allow the interviewee to consider what experience would best suit the question, and the interviewer can get a better picture of the applicant's thought process.
Before conducting an interview, write a list of all of the core competencies you'll want the prospective employee to have. Once you've done that, create questions that will yield examples of those competencies. In doing so, be as creative as you'd like.
For example, if you want someone who has good mediation skills, you might pose the question: "Tell me about a time when you had a conflict with a co-worker and how you resolved it." If the applicant describes an incident in which he or she asked to be transferred to a different workgroup, you'll know that he or she might not be the best person for your job.
While there is no crystal ball that allows small-business owners to know that a potential employee will be the right person for a particular job, when you're faced with making a hiring decision, you want to make the most informed decision possible.
With behavioral-event interviewing's emphasis on past performance, you might find the key piece of information that you need.
