Page 151 - Boost Your Hiring

The Surefire Way to Boost Your Score 137

Each question will ask for a time or an example. An example of a be-
havioral question would be, “Tell me about a time when you had to deal
with a disgruntled customer.”
If the answer given is not an example of a specific incident in which
the candidate had to deal with a customer who was angry, the candidate
will not have answered the question. Because you did not get what you
wanted from the question, you will need to ask follow-up questions to
get the answer.
Some candidates will not be able to provide you with a specific exam-
ple. They either won’t be able to think of an example, or perhaps they
haven’t had the experience that they claim they have. It will take some
persistence or judgment on your part to determine if the person is just
talking or whether he or she does have the specific skills it takes to do the
job. In order to assess an accurate pattern of a candidate’s true behavior,
you will need to hear specific examples.

Spin Me a Tale
When you ask situational or “what if” questions, candidates can make
up any answer. In other words they can “spin you a tale.”An example of
a situational question would be, “What would you do if you had to deal
with a disgruntled customer?”
You can see how this question differs from the behavioral question
because it does not ask for an example. The object of the situational
question is to determine how the candidate thinks.
When you ask “what if” questions, you will want to listen to hear the
thought process of the candidates. Listen carefully to determine how
they “think on their feet” or how they go about solving a problem.

Probing for Specific Examples
Before you give up on candidates who cannot answer a behavioral ques-
tion, there is a technique that you can use to try to help them through
the example. That technique is called “probing,” or digging deeper. If
candidates do not give you an example the first time, you will want to
help them through the example with some probes.
Here are some examples of probes that will help you get the rest of
the story:

• What was your role in that project?
• When you say “we,” what part of “we” was you?
• How did that work out in the end?

• Could you be more specific with the steps you took?