Behavioral Interviews Have Merit After All

I always thought certain behavioral questions were silly. “Scammable” is the word I used, because the right answer was obvious and it would be easy to tell a story that impressed the interviewer but wasn’t actually true.

“Tell me a time you worked through adversity with a coworker.” “Describe a challenge you encountered during a past project and how you overcame it.” Anybody could lie and describe how they should handle such a situation, but there was no way to know if they’d actually done it that way.

My view has changed.

Usually, the thing that prevents people from handling such situations well is that they don’t understand how to do so. Someone who can articulate the best way to handle these situations – even if the specific story they tell is fabricated – is likely capable of handling similar issues in the future. Being emotionally intelligent and aware of the “right” way to deal with these problems is a strong positive signal, because people usually don’t choose to mismanage these situations. There’s no incentive to do so.

However, this isn’t true for situations where the company’s interest and the individual’s interest don’t align. A question like “when did you put another team’s priorities above your own team’s” is meant to elicit a story about how you will sacrifice your own career goals for the company’s best interest, and knowing the best answer is not very related to your proclivity for doing it in the future.

A similar case is “Tell me about a time you put in extra hours for the good of the project, even though you knew you wouldn’t get credit.” This is a very scammable question. Anyone can tell a story about how dedicated they were to a past project, but it has little relation to whether they’d actually be willing to do that if needed.

So my new view is: behavioral questions have merit when they’re assessing your judgment but not when they’re assessing your ethics or commitment.