

Ask HN: Behavioral Interview Questions. - JohnFritzen

Does anyone have any tips or helpful suggestions for answering Behavioral Interview Questions during a job interview?<p>(explanation and examples: http://www.quintcareers.com/sample_behavioral.html)<p>If you are an employer, do you find using this interview technique effective?<p>Thank you.
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gatsby
I have a negative experience with behavioral interview questions, both as an
employer and employee.

There's a lot of room for embellishment and most behavioral questions don't
properly summarize the candidate's qualifications. They're a snapshot of an
hour or two when the candidate was faced with a problem, or had to exceed a
goal, or had to wow someone with a presentation. Anyone can think of one or
two things that they did extraordinarily well and one or two things that
challenged them, but that doesn't qualify or disqualify anyone from a job.

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benvanderbeek
I've never used these in hiring. Assuming the candidate doesn't have the
questions beforehand, seems you're mostly testing someone's ability to
BS/improv and promote themselves on the spot. For coders, I don't find this
skill to be closely tied to job performance. Possibly an inverse correlation.

Providing them beforehand would possibly be more useful, but in this case
there's no real need to "practice" so I don't think that's what the link you
provided is referring to.

