By Winnie Ayero | 20 May 2022

We will be writing a series of articles about various kinds of interviews over the next few weeks on a fortnightly basis. Look out for these. We will start with behavioural interviews today.

Behavioural interviews, also known as competency based interviews, are premised on the argument that past behaviour is a predictor of future performance, so interviewees are asked to describe actual past behaviours rather than future actions or plans.

For instance, instead of asking how do you or how would you motivate people, an interviewer might instead ask a question like this: “Tell me about a time you wanted to get other people to do something, how did you go about it?”

How to respond? There are at least 3 acronym guides on how to respond to behavioural interview questions: STAR, CAR, SAR.

STAR stands for Situation, Task, Approach, Result

CAR stands for Challenge, Approach, Result

SAR stands for Situation Approach Result

As you can see, they are not very different from each other. Let us see how these approaches work in practice.

For instance, to answer the above question about motivation, one could answer as follows:

Last year towards the end of the year, a lot of staff took their outstanding leave to avoid having to forfeit it, consequently we were short staffed (situation/challenge) yet still had to deliver on our sales targets for December (task). To motivate the few staff left in the office, I promised leftover gift shopping vouchers from the Easter season to each staff that would meet or exceed their December target (approach/action). By the end of the month, we had hit 105% of our sales target (result).

Behavioural Interview questions ask about a situation that happened in the past and how you approached it. Here are a few more examples:

Give me an example of a difficult problem you solved

Tell me about a time when you conflicted with a colleague, how did you resolve the conflict?

Tell me about a time when you worked effectively under pressure

Can you tell me about a time when you set and achieved a particular goal?

Have you ever made a mistake at work? How did you handle it?

There you have it. Look out for the next article on another type of interview on 3rd June 2022. Feel free to contact us for interview coaching services. We are also working on DIY Career Kits for those who prefer to Do It Yourself (DIY).

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This article is also published in the GFI Newsletter on LinkedIn