Recruiting Strategy
Behavioural questions: the key to avoiding bad hires?
Orla Hodnett
HireHive
Orla Hodnett
HireHive
Orla Hodnett
HireHive
Orla Hodnett
HireHive
Interviews are a necessary and highly informative part of the hiring process. The few minutes you get with a candidate will give you a very strong indication of whether they match your organisational culture, meet your requirements as a business or share your long-term goals. Interviewing needs to involve a varied approach to make sure you're getting all necessary information from your candidates.
Your line of questioning is one way to get insightful information from potential candidates. Having a set of questions that elicit both data on the individual’s set of qualifications and cultural outlook are key to finding out if they cut muster.
If you can understand how a candidate might hypothetically react to a workplace situation, you have a much better grasp of their capabilities.
A subset of questions that can be very helpful in learning more about your candidates are behavioural questions. They tend to raise confusion for some, as to what value they offer a recruiter, but used well, they can offer huge insight.
If you can understand how a candidate might hypothetically react to a workplace situation or how they could apply past experiences to their day-to-day work, you have a much better grasp of their capabilities. Demonstrating their behavioural tendencies communicates their value to you and your organisation.
Communication skills are essential in most careers. Whether the job requires direct communication with customers or requires extensive inter-departmental communication, if a candidate cannot demonstrate this at interview stage, they are likely to be unsuitable.
Using a line of questioning to establish their favour means of communication, or asking for anecdotal evidence of an incidence where they had to convince colleagues of a new way of doing things, will very quickly let you know if they’re capable of open communication.
Image by Tomasz Stasiuk.
Problem-solving skills are the common denominator in any talented team member, no matter what level they’re working at, and no matter the industry. This is another one where past experiences could be very revealing.
If you cannot incorporate some kind of assessment into the interview process, this may be your only opportunity to let a candidate demonstrate their problem-solving skills. Creativity and critical thinking are essential, so if a candidate can share their ability to think outside the box they’re a strong candidate.
If a potential candidate can make this evident, through examples from their past work experience, your likelihood of mis-hiring is greatly reduced
A good cultural match is basically someone who can work well as part of your team. A good team player will be able to collaborate and deal with disagreement, keeping progress going. If a potential candidate can make this evident, through examples from their past work experience, your likelihood of mis-hiring is greatly reduced.
Nobody likes to admit they’re wrong, but if it meant that they learned something new then maybe the hassle was worth it? People are often much quicker to share their successes and how they did it. Learning about a candidate's processes and how they work to reduce error will give great insight into how they work… and how they might work for you.
“HireHive makes the team a lot more productive. We’d be lost without it. Team Leaders can do it all themselves if needed or jump in at the right time and know exactly where everything is and what’s happening.”
Hilary Dempsey Head of HR at Life Credit union
