Behaviourally based interviewing or Behavioural interviewing

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By asking questions that relate to the Competencies required for the job you are more likely to find a candidate who has the right skills, knowledge and motivation. Look at your list of Competencies for the job. Then build your questions to try to get the candidate to talk about the situations in previous jobs where they were required to use these competencies. Competency based interview questions require the candidate to describe:

• The context of their experience,
• The actions they took, and
• The results of those actions.

This type of interviewing is called behaviourally based interviewing or behavioural interviewing. You should get each person on the selection panel to focus on different competencies. The interviewer should probe the candidate to find out about the true nature of the persons skills, knowledge and motivation in each area of competency. For example, questions could begin with;

• Can you tell me about a time….?
• Describe a situation when you…. What was the situation and what did you do about it? What was different about this situation…?
• Can you give some examples when you…?
• Can you tell us about the way you approached your work at…?
• Describe a time when you faced….?

Work based assessment tasks include:

• Case studies. For example, give the applicant a short and typical story about an incident and then ask them to write up notes for the next shift worker. All staff should be able to write up an incident clearly.
• Voluntary shifts or social outings. Ask the preferred applicants to volunteer for a shift where they can be assessed by the people they will be supporting and the other workers on the shift.