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Behavioural Interviewing: Evaluating a candidate’s soft skills

Get beyond the CV to level up your recruitment game.
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Published 13 Feb 2024
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Updated 5 Feb 2025
Two women talking at interview over a table

Imagine you’re sitting across from a potential hire, their CV positively bursts with impressive qualifications. Yet, as the interview unfolds, you realise that what actually sets a candidate apart isn’t just their technical expertise. It’s the ‘je ne sais quoi’ – or to put it in management terms, their soft skills. They can communicate, collaborate, adapt and play as part of a team. This is what makes a good candidate great.

This is where behavioural interviewing comes into play. In this post, we’ll guide you through the nuances of this interviewing technique, designed to uncover the real person behind the CV. We’ll explore effective strategies to assess those crucial soft skills that often make the difference between a good employee and a great one.

So, whether you’re a seasoned hiring manager or new to the recruitment field, these insights will help you uncover the very best of talent.

What is a behavioural interview?

Behavioural interviewing is a strategic approach to hiring that focuses on a candidate’s past behaviour in specific situations to predict their future performance. This is based on the principle that past behaviour is a good indicator of how a person will behave in similar circumstances in the future.

So, unlike more traditional interview questions which focus on hypothetical scenarios, behavioural interviewing is about exploring real-life situations and experiences that the candidate has encountered. This method provides valuable insights into the candidate’s soft skills, work ethic, and adaptability, offering a more rounded understanding of how they might perform in the role and fit within your team.

Why is it important to assess a candidate’s soft skills?

A candidate’s soft skills give valuable insights into how they work. Digging deeper into their experience with team dynamics and collaboration can indicate how they will fit into your team.

An diverse team in an office

But don’t just take our word for it – 91% of talent professionals agree that soft skills are very important to the future of recruitment and HR. This covers skills such as adaptability, problem-solving, leadership, active listening, empathy and other emotional intelligence indicators. Evaluating these skills is crucial to understanding how the candidate will align with your culture, work environment and customer expectations.

The key takeaway? 

While technical skills may get a candidate hired, soft skills often determine their long-term success and growth within your organisation. Employees with strong soft skills are more likely to excel in their roles and contribute to the overall success of your business.

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How do behavioural interviews differ from traditional interviews?

Behavioural interviews differ from traditional interviews in their focus on past behaviour, structured questioning style, and emphasis on soft skills. So now let’s take a closer look at behavioural interview techniques.

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Key behavioural interviewing techniques

Structured questions

Structured questioning involves using specific, consistent questions designed to elicit detailed responses about a candidate’s past experiences and actions. The predetermined questions help interviewers maintain consistency and uniformity, allowing for fair and objective comparisons for each candidate. By focusing on real-life examples and situations, structured questioning provides valuable insights into a candidate’s behaviour, skills, and potential fit for the role.

STAR method

The STAR method is a structured model to help candidates give clear and focused answers, describing a Situation they faced, the Task required, the Action they took, and the Result of their action (S-T-A-R). The brevity of the answers reveals insights into the candidate’s communication style, as well as their people and organisational skills.

This technique emerged in the 1970s in the shift towards competency-based interviews and has gained popularity over the last few decades given the recognition that past behaviour and experiences were strong indicators of future performance.

Focus on competencies and skills

Speaking of competency-based interviews, focusing on competencies and skills involves asking candidates to provide specific examples from their past experiences that demonstrate their abilities in key areas relevant to the job. This technique allows interviewers to assess how candidates have applied their skills in real-world situations, giving insight into their proficiency, problem-solving capabilities, and how they might perform in the role. By concentrating on competencies such as teamwork, leadership, communication, and adaptability, interviewers can gauge a candidate’s potential fit and effectiveness within their business.

Probing and follow-up questions

Probing and follow-up questions are used in behavioural interviews to delve deeper into a candidate’s responses, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of their experiences and skills. Such questions often seek clarification, additional details, or examples, helping interviewers uncover the nuances of a candidate’s behaviour and decision-making processes. By asking probing and follow-up questions, interviewers can challenge superficial answers, encourage candidates to reflect more deeply and gather more precise and relevant information to accurately assess the candidate’s suitability for the role.

Consistency

Consistency in behavioural interviews refers to the practice of asking each candidate the same set of questions, ensuring a fair and standardised evaluation process. This approach allows interviewers to compare candidates objectively based on their responses to identical scenarios and criteria. Maintaining consistency in questioning helps to minimise biases and subjectivity, leading to fairer hiring decisions. This is key to ethical hiring and ensures that all candidates are assessed on the same competencies and skills that are crucial for the role.

Behaviour evaluation

Behaviour evaluation provides valuable insights into a candidate’s character, work ethic, and interpersonal skills, which are often as important as technical abilities in determining their overall suitability for the job. This technique focuses on understanding how a candidate has demonstrated key competencies and skills in real-life contexts, such as problem-solving, teamwork, leadership, and adaptability. You might also choose to combine this with psychometric testing.

How to identify the key traits and soft skills required for a role

Start by analysing the job description and the specific needs of the team and organisation. For instance, if the role involves leading projects, look for leadership, communication, and team management skills. If it’s a customer-facing position, prioritise traits like empathy, active listening, and conflict resolution.

To do this, it can be helpful to engage with current team members or managers to understand the dynamics and challenges of the role. For example, a team member might share that effective collaboration and adaptability have been crucial in their fast-paced work environment.

You can also review successful past employees in similar roles. If a previous star performer was known for their exceptional problem-solving skills and creativity, these traits might be essential for the role.

Lastly, consider the company culture. If your business values innovation and continuous learning, traits like curiosity and a growth mindset become non-negotiables.

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Examples of behavioural interview questions

Now let’s get into the details with some specific examples you can use in your next behavioural interview.

Communication skills

1. Can you tell me about a time when you had to explain a complex idea or process to a colleague or client? How did you ensure they understood?”

2. Describe a situation where you had to handle a difficult conversation at work. How did you manage it and what was the outcome?

Leadership skills

3. Give an example of a time when you had to lead a team through a challenging project. What was your approach and how did it turn out?

4. Tell me about a time when you had to motivate a team member who was disengaged or underperforming. What strategies did you use?

Problem-solving skills

5. Describe a situation where you faced an unexpected problem at work. How did you identify the issue and what steps did you take to resolve it?

6. Can you provide an example of a time when you had to make a difficult decision quickly? What was the situation and how did you handle it?

Teamwork and collaboration

7. Tell me about a time when you had to work closely with a colleague who was very different from you. How did you ensure effective collaboration?

8. Describe a project where you had to collaborate with multiple teams or departments. What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them?

Adaptability and versatility

9. Can you give an example of a time when you had to adapt to a significant change at work? How did you handle the transition?

10. Describe a situation where you had to learn a new skill or approach quickly to meet a project’s needs. What was the outcome?

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How do you analyse candidate responses in behavioural interviews?

So you’ve asked the right questions. Do you know what answers you’re looking for, or how to interpret them? Let’s take a quick look at how to analyse your candidate’s responses.

Specificity and relevance 

Check if the candidate provides concrete examples and details in their responses, demonstrating their direct involvement and actions. Detailed stories that directly relate to the job requirements demonstrate relevance, competence and experience.

Consistency

Look for consistency in the candidate’s responses across different questions to gauge authenticity and reliability.

Problem-solving and decision-making

Analyse how the candidate approached challenges and made decisions in their examples. Look for how the candidate demonstrates logical and effective approaches to overcoming challenges.

Soft skills

Observe indications of soft skills like communication, teamwork, and adaptability in their stories. Examples that highlight effective collaboration and positive interactions with others are a great sign.

Learning and growth

Identify instances where the candidate learned from experiences or demonstrated personal and professional growth.

Positive attitude

Focusing on solutions, learning opportunities, and constructive outcomes in challenging situations.

What are some red flags to look for in responses?

It should go without saying that vague or general responses won’t cut it with behavioural interview questions. The same goes for a lack of personal responsibility – constantly blaming others or taking a negative attitude are not great signs. Failure to recognise or admit mistakes or no evidence of learning from past experiences shows a lack of self-awareness.

Also watch out for inconsistencies – contradictory responses or details that don’t really add up can suggest either dishonesty or unreliability, neither of which bode well for a future hire.

How do you rate and score candidate answers effectively?

A great way to rate and score candidate answers effectively and fairly is to use a scoring system. This means you need to create a consistent rating scale (e.g. 1-5) for each competency or skill. Based on your reviews with your existing team members, clearly define what constitutes a low, average, and high score for each question, based on the desired competencies and skills.

In the interview (or after), use a standardised evaluation form to score each candidate. Record specific observations and examples from the candidate’s responses to justify scores and facilitate decision-making. Lastly, if possible, have multiple interviewers score independently and then discuss to reach a consensus, reducing individual biases.

How can you mitigate bias in behavioural interviews?

To reduce bias in hiring, it’s important to create a structured recruitment process with standardised hiring procedures like structured questions and candidate scoring.

But there’s more to it than that.

It’s also important to provide diversity training for HR and hiring teams and ensure job ads have wide visibility with inclusive language. Implementing blind screenings and analysing data on your talent pool and hiring procedures can also help identify and address unconscious biases.

Continuously prioritising diversity and inclusion company-wide, through inclusive hiring practices and promoting a diverse range of team members to leadership positions, will create a more diverse and inclusive workforce.

For more, check out our blog on reducing bias in hiring.

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Measuring the impact of behavioural interviewing

With behavioural interviewing, you’re aiming to optimise your talent acquisition process for peak performance and efficiency in the corporate race. While it can be difficult to measure non-tangible things such as behavioural interviewing, here are some guidelines and metrics to consider:

1. Employee performance

Monitor the performance of hires made through behavioural interviews and compare key hiring metrics before and after implementing behavioural interviews. Are you seeing an uptick in candidate quality and job fit?

2. Employee success

Track the performance and achievements of hires made through this method. Are they accelerating in their roles and driving results? Collect and analyse feedback from both interviewers and candidates. Evaluate the candidate experience. Is the process more efficient and effective? Has your time to hire reduced?

3. Retention rates

Monitor how long new hires stay with the company. High retention rates indicate a well-oiled hiring process, setting every new hire up for success.

4. Cultural integration

Observe how new hires blend into the company culture. Are they contributing positively to the team dynamics and company morale?

Quinn’s tip: A clear hiring and onboarding process doesn’t just help your candidates. Research shows that a standardised onboarding programme increases new hire productivity by 70%. Streamline your onboarding experience with Employment Hero.

Make better hiring decisions

Ready to take it to the next level? Leveraging employment software alongside behavioural interviewing is a powerful combination for making better hiring decisions.

This approach streamlines the recruitment process with technology, ensuring efficiency and consistency, while behavioural interviewing techniques delve deeper into candidates’ past experiences, providing valuable insights into their potential fit and performance.

Together, they create a robust, data-driven hiring strategy that helps you find and retain top talent. Employment, solved.

 

Alexandra Turner
People Specialist - Employment Hero
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