Jeff Whippo explains why behavioral interview questions are important. While hiring a new employee, it is important to determine whether the candidate’s motivations, characteristics, and personality are appropriate for the role. Thus, behavioral interview questions are designed to help you discover this information, making them important to the process.

With technical skills, you want to prioritize the target traits based on their level of importance. This approach helps you determine which ones are most valued and can be especially useful if you interview two strong candidates with different behavioral characteristics.

Jeff Whippo shares that while creating behavioral interview questions, you can begin by focusing on open-ended questions that prompt candidates to provide examples of their prior experiences. The intention of the question is less about getting details about their technical capabilities and more about getting insight into how they think.

About Jeffery Whippo

Jeffery Whippo further states that in order to be successful at answering these situational interview questions, the candidates need to be prepared to talk about their experiences, especially those related to the job for which they are interviewing. He opines that such questions are a way of evaluating the candidate’s future performance based on his/her past experience. The answer to such a question depends upon the past experience of the employee or his/her professional history.