Behavioral based interview questions, also known as situational based interview questions, are commonly used by interviewers to assess an applicant’s past performance and predict their future performance. In this article, we will delve into the valuable insights on how to excel in IT behavioral interviews. By following these tips and strategies, you can effectively navigate these types of questions and showcase your skills and abilities to potential employers.
- Recognize Behavioral Based Interview Questions: To succeed in an IT behavioral interview, you must first identify the key indicators that a question is behavioral in nature. Look for phrases such as “describe a situation when,” “tell us about a time,” or “give an example of X.” These prompts signal that you should provide a story-based response, highlighting your past experiences and actions.
- Understand the Interviewer’s Perspective: Before answering any interview question, pause and consider what the interviewer aims to understand through their inquiry. By empathizing with the interviewer’s perspective, you can tailor your response to align with their expectations. This awareness helps you present yourself as a suitable candidate for the role.
- Utilize the STAR Methodology: The STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) methodology is a valuable framework for structuring your answers to behavioral based questions. Start by describing the situation or setting, followed by the task or challenge you faced. Then, outline the specific actions you took to address the situation and conclude with the positive outcome or result that you achieved. This method ensures your responses are well-organized, concise, and effective in showcasing your skills.
- Prepare Your “You Stories”: To excel in an IT behavioral interview, it’s crucial to have a collection of “you stories” ready in advance. These stories should be based on real-life situations from your career or personal life that demonstrate your problem-solving abilities, teamwork skills, or successful outcomes. Consider achievements, team collaborations, instances of overcoming adversity, and any other scenarios that highlight your strengths. Having these stories at your disposal allows you to provide compelling and relevant examples during the interview.
- Tailor Your Responses to the IT Domain: Given that you are interviewing for an IT position, it’s essential to align your responses with the technical and IT space. Review the job description and identify the key skills and traits sought by the employer. When crafting your answers, emphasize experiences and achievements that directly relate to the IT industry. This targeted approach enhances your credibility and demonstrates your suitability for the role.
Conclusion: Mastering behavioral based interview questions is crucial for IT professionals seeking to excel in job interviews. By understanding the nature of these questions, empathizing with the interviewer’s perspective, and utilizing the STAR methodology, you can provide compelling and well-structured answers. Furthermore, preparing a repertoire of “you stories” and tailoring your responses to the IT domain will help you stand out from the competition and increase your chances of securing the desired IT position. Remember, practice and preparation are key to confidently navigate behavioral interviews and showcase your skills and experiences effectively. Good luck in your IT job search!
Episode Transcript:
Welcome to the IT Job Coach podcast. Your go-to source for it, career advice and guidance. Whether you’re just entering the workforce, seeking to make a career pivot, or you have recently experienced job loss. This podcast is here to support you. Now here is your host, Frank D. Mayo. Hey everyone, and welcome to this episode of the IT Job Coach.
Today we’re gonna be talking about. Behavioral based interview questions, also known as situational based interview questions. So behavioral based interview questions are designed to gather information about your past performance during an interview, right? The premise is that your future performance will be like your past performance, okay?
And that’s what the interviewer is counting on when they’re asking these kinds of questions. The questions typically are specific to the skills and traits relevant to the position you’re interviewing for us. So for IT related positions, they probably are gonna be aligned more to the IT space and to the technical space.
Personally, for me, behavioral based interview questions are in my. Go tool toolbox. As an interviewer, when I’m interviewing folks, I always have a few of these behavioral based interview questions in the back burner ready to go at any given time because sometimes when I’m asking questions to individuals and they’re, and when they’re not giving me enough information for me to realize if they’re gonna be right for this position, I can ask a behavioral based interview question, and typically I’m gonna get more out of them.
During those questions. So you might be thinking, Frank, how am I gonna know what a behavioral based interview question is and how can I keep an eye out for it? And basically what you’re looking for are questions that begin with terms such as describe a situation when, tell us about a time. When give an example of X, those are the types of terms that you’re gonna be listening for that will prompt you to know that this is a behavioral based interview question.
Interviewers may or may not use this format of questions. But don’t be tripped up if they do. So make sure you prepare for these and be ready. Let me give you an example of a situational based interview question that I use when I’m interviewing folks for say, a help desk position. And the question would go something along the lines of, tell me about a time, either professionally or personally, when you had to troubleshoot a PC issue.
What was the situation? What did you do? And what was the outcome? And sometimes people answer that and they’ll give me this amazing answer and I’m like, wow, this is the person for this position. There’s no doubt in my mind. And then sometimes I get an answer such as, I fix PCs by replacing hardware or reinstalling software.
For the most part, it really depends on the situation, and when I hear that answer I say zero points. I cannot stress this enough. When an interviewer asks a question like that, you have to tell a story. When a person answers a behavioral based interview question in that way, such as. That’s what I do. It makes me think they didn’t understand the question.
I start to think about their comprehension ability, and it also makes me think maybe they don’t have a situation or an example where they had to troubleshoot a pc. I want a story about that situation. So let’s go over an example of an answer that I would appreciate getting when I asked this question.
Yes, I, I have had a time when I, I had to troubleshoot a PC issue. One of our salespeople called the help desk because they couldn’t access their email, and it was really important to them because they were waiting on a very important email from a customer. Saying that they were gonna make a purchase, I quickly ascertained that they were working from home.
I asked them to bring up a browser and go to google.com to see what came up. And unfortunately it said page cannot be displayed. So I asked if they connected their PC through a wireless connection or a wired connection, and they told me wireless. So I asked them to walk over to their router and see what lights were on it, and they said some of the lights were amber, but there weren’t any green lights on the router at all.
So I asked them to restart the router and afterwards, I asked them to bring up a Google Internet browser again, and it came up google.com. Then I had them log back into their email to check that that was working, and it seemed to be working because they had emails in their inbox then, and then I sent them a test email and they actually got it immediately and they were really happy because at the top of their inbox, All of a sudden showed up while I was on the phone with them, this important email saying that they got the sale.
So they were really happy with the outcome and I was really happy that I was able to help them out. And when I hear that answer, I think they are on fire. That’s an answer I can get behind. They told me the situation. They demonstrated their troubleshooting and customer service skills all in one answer.
Plus they listened to the question and they answered it appropriately. So if you have practiced and you’re aware of these type of questions, you can listen for the cues and you can nail the answer. So how do you prep for these? Top tip of the day. To be successful in an interview, it’s important to have a bunch of you stories ready to go at all times.
You might be thinking, Frank, what the heck’s a you story? You stories are things that you have had happen to you, either in your career or personal life that can help you describe. How you handle situations. So think about all these different situations you may have been in, ones that stand out in your mind, such as achievements for you, team situations that you were on, and how did you work with those team members.
Think about times where you had to overcome adversity. That’s always a good one. And think also about times when you were successful and those type of stories can be used for any type of question, not just behavioral based interview questions. You can draw on these at any time, so if you go into an interview with a whole bunch of you stories, You’re gonna be prepared.
So let’s get back to behavioral based interview questions. I have questions like this to use in an interview at the ready because I can pull out a lot of information, get a great perspective on the person based on what their story is, and it helps me to hear the situation that they’ve been in and how they handled it.
It was makes my life so much easier as an interviewer and interviewers will ask these types of questions. One thing you always wanna do, For any interview question and especially behavioral based interview questions, is to ask yourself, what is the interviewer looking to understand about me in this question?
That’s gonna give you a hint as to how to answer it. Whatever question that is, before you answer it, pause for a split second. Think in your mind and say, what are they really asking me this for? And what is it that I need to portray to them to get them to where they need to be? Remember to listen for the prompts that this question may be a behavioral based or situational based interview question.
And the remember the things to listen for are, describe a situation, tell us about a time. Give an example of when you hear that, think in your mind. I need to tell them a story and not just any old story. This is the next step to that. The story needs to include the following parts or some combination of these parts, and one is the situation, right?
Describing the situation, providing them the setting for what’s happening. Number two, the task that you are working on, whatever it is that you were tasked with. The third thing is the action that you took, and the fourth is the result. So for me to remember those steps, I use the star method. This isn’t something I came up with.
This is something that’s been out there for quite a long time. This is just something that helps me remember how to answer these questions. And so, In the STAR method you have S T A R S stands for the situation, right? Describe the situation or the setting. T stands for what you were tasked with. What is it that they asked you to do?
What is it that you needed to do? A stands for the action you took, and R stands for the result, and that’s how you use the STAR methodology in your own mind to formulate your stories. Now, let’s go back to the example I gave earlier, right? If you remember the question I had asked, tell me about a time, either personally or professionally, when you had to troubleshoot a PC issue.
What was the situation? What did you do and what was the outcome? And I kind of gave prompts there specifically for this star methodology, and let’s go through the answer. So, right, the person said, one of our salespeople called the help desk. They couldn’t get into their email. That’s the situation. The task, they needed to read their email because they’re waiting on a very important sales order, so immediately started to troubleshoot their issue.
Right. That’s what you were tasked with fixing their email. Then we went into the action. I asked them if they were in the office or working from home. They said they were at home. I asked them to bring up an internet browser, right? We checked if they could get to google.com. They got a page cannot be displayed.
I asked them if they could connect to their PC through wireless or through a network cable. They said wireless. I asked them to check their router. We figured out that the lights that were on it weren’t good lights, and we had them restart it and the result. Right afterwards, the internet was working. I had them check to make sure that their email was there.
I tested. I sent them an email to make sure that they got that, and they were happy with the outcome, and I was happy too, right? We ended it on a positive note. We got through the entire story and we used that star methodology, so that makes for a very well thought out answer, right, that provides all the information needed to the interviewer.
Be sure to keep that in mind during your next interview. Before we wrap, keep these things in mind. Top tip of the day, have you stories ready for your interview? I cannot say that enough. Have you stories be prepared with you stories. Number two, be aware of behavioral based interview questions and know the indicators of that question style that tells you in your mind I need to tell them a story.
Three, answer them using the star methodology or whatever methodology you choose to make sure it’s a well thought out. Planned answer. And the last one is, do your best. That’s all we can ask for. That’s all we can ask of ourselves. We just have to do our best each and every day. So thank you for listening to the IT Job Coach podcast.
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