Behavioral Interview Questions and Answers

By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter

In this video, I explain how to answer a few tough interview questions including:

00:00 Intro

01:01 Tell me about a time when you had to give someone difficult feedback and how you managed it?

04:02 Did you receive any promotions?

05:29 Describe a contribution you have made to a team project you worked on.

06:50 What was the most important task you ever had?

08:24 Explain how your work experience is relevant to this position.

09:50 Can you summarize the contribution you would make to our organization?

11:16 If you were CEO of this company, what would you change?

How to Use ChatGPT to Prepare for Behavioral interview Questions

Hi, I’m Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter and I’m back with another episode of Ask Me Anything. And, you know, I’ll start by saying, I try to cover a lot of things in my videos and podcasts. And there are things I miss from time to time.

So if you have a question about job hunting, the easiest way to ask it, and I want to be clear, it’s a quick question. Like in this case, it’s how to answer particular interview questions. I’m not looking to go into this elaborate, personalized thing.

I want to help not just you, but a lot of other people concurrently. So I’m not going to respond to general questions. I want something specific.

Okay? So here, we’re going to answer some tough interview questions that could be asked on interviews. And the first one we’re going to cover is, tell me about a time where you had to give someone difficult feedback and how you managed it. So I want to start by saying, dealing with difficult feedback on an interview is different than how you might do it in real life.

And the way I think of it is, on an interview, you’d start off by saying, I want to make sure that you understand that this person was not caught by surprise. They were informed of this consistently as an issue, until the point where, at the end of the day, it was necessary to make them have a more difficult conversation. So you’d talk about anything that you did to prepare for your talk, which covers these points.

And you describe the techniques that you use to deliver the feedback constructively and positively. And you talk with the interviewer about what you did to make sure that they understood the feedback, because if they don’t understand it, they’re not going to change the behavior, right? And then explain any follow ups that you did to make sure the problem was addressed. So like many of the answers to behavioral interview questions, you follow the acronym of SOAR, situation, objective, action, result.

And thus, in dealing with someone who suddenly was coming in chronically late, you had an employee who’d spoken with quietly about their new latenesses, and it got to a point where others were noticing the behavior, too. And it was adversely affecting some of the other employees. So you brought them into your office and very calmly said, Look, I’ve spoken with you about this problem a couple of times.

The Missing Statement in Most Answers to Behavioral Interview Questions

What’s really going on? Tell me what’s going on that’s causing this issue. And, you know, up until recently, the punctuality was never in doubt. But now it is.

So is there something going on? And then you talk about how, you know, they had a family issue with a caregiver or a kid who was finding it difficult to get out in the morning, yada, yada, yada. And thus, you know, you’re listening and empathizing, but then coming up with joint solutions to try and deal with this problem. So again, follow up with the acronym of SOAR, situation, objective, result.

Now, that’s a little bit different than the STAR acronym, which is situation, task, action, result. To me, STAR is for when you’re relatively junior, because you’re going to deal with task more than anything, versus being in leadership when you’re dealing in a more mature set. So that’s question number one.

Here’s the next one. Did you receive any promotions? Hey, you know, if you’ve received them, this is your opportunity to brag. You know, I started as a junior individual, and about a year and a half in, I was promoted into one role.

And then two years after that, I was promoted into a different role. Now, basically, what had happened was, you know, management recognized that I was putting in great work. What I had done along the way was . . . and you talk about how you help the firm make or save money.

And they wanted to reward me with a promotion and a salary increase. It was great. So you kind of deal with it that way.

Now, if you haven’t been with an organization for very long, or it’s relatively small and relatively flat, then you can just simply say, I’m working too small an organization for me really to get any promotions. And that’s my issue. You know, I’m in a place where, you know, there are eight of us working in total.

I manage the group. My boss is in another city. We talk by video from time to time.

This is it. Now, I’m not going to get any more promotions. So I was hired at this level.

And this is where I’ll die. And I don’t want to die. I want to keep thriving.

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So that’s the way you’d answer the question depending upon circumstances. Describe a contribution that you made to a team project you worked on. Now, this is generally a staff level question, rather than a management question.

Even though there are places where from a management perspective, you know, there’s a team orientation to it. This is really a staff level question. So again, SOAR, Situation, Objective, Action, Result.

And we can’t make stuff up because they’re going to probe further. So unless you’ve made up all the details in advance, it just doesn’t work. So think about a situation in your past where you work as part of a team.

And you can say, I’ve been in multiple team situations. And some, I’ve risen to the top and someone was more appropriate for me to follow direction, rather than give direction. So, you know, there have been a lot of situations where I’ve been assigned responsibility for such and such, where I led a team of people.

In other situations, I was part of the team of people, and just being one of the folks working on the project. They pick folks because it’s not guys, it’s not girls, you know, one of the people working on the project. So, again, follow the acronym of SOAR.

What was the most important task you ever had? Now, this one is interesting, because you have to be a little theatrical with it. And, again, you’re going to use the acronym of SOAR. Again, Situation, Objective, Action, Result.

But I want you to think about it for a while because if you dive right into it, they’re going to think your answer is can. Most important task I’ve ever had. I think basically the one that comes to mind first is one where and you start to talk about a situation where you helped your firm make money on a project or on a task where others had failed before.

Being the hero is always a good situation for a question like this. So, let’s say you were brought in to a firm that wasn’t collecting revenue in a timely manner. How you streamlined operations and improve collections adequately in order to get money in within 40 days, rather than the 100 days on average that was coming in, with most of the time going even longer than that.

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So, that becomes an example of something that you could speak to. Explain how your work experience is relevant to this position. This is the great question.

I love this. And you can basically say, if you give me a copy of the job description, I’ll go item by item with you and walk through it. But from what you’ve told me, this is how I match up.

You spoke about wanting someone with eight years of experience with such and such. I have nine. You spoke about someone with four years of experience.

And you kind of go through the job description to the best of your ability. And more importantly, then you convert to the functionality that’s been explained to you. You convert and talk about how you’ve previously done situations, either like this one, similar to this one, along the lines of dealing with people of various levels of sophistication and capability, and inspiring them to do great work, so that it wasn’t a chore.

It wasn’t an obligation. They wanted to do it. Now, I have no idea of the team that I’m inheriting.

But this is my past where I’ve been able to do this previously. I hope to be able to do it for you. So, again, go through the background as fits the role.

More importantly, go through the functionality that they’ve outlined to you and how you’ve done it previously. Match it with your background. That’s the way to really approach this.

Can you summarize the contribution to you that you would make to our organization? I think of this as a second interview question, because you have more information from people at this point. Now, if it’s asked on a first interview, I would basically say, I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that I know exactly how I’m going to create an impact. If some organizations really don’t want to change at all, and they just want to do plug and play and plug someone into a job that was done well before.

The Missing Statement in Most Answers to Behavioral Interview Questions

And the result winds up being that they don’t want me to do anything to change anything. But in addition to getting the work done, I’d like to do small things to help people be inspired, so that they love their work, and they don’t start thinking of other alternatives. And I’d like to do lots of little things to improve operations that everyone can buy into.

So, I’m not sure how I’m going to affect your organization. This has been my history. And what do you think? How do you think I can contribute? So I think there’s one more question I want to address here.

Bear with me. Ah, this is a variation on that question. If you were CEO of this company, what would you change? I have no idea.

And that’s the correct answer. I have no idea. I’m an outsider looking in.

I read stuff in the trade press that says certain things or I read things using Google. I have no idea whether this is true or not. So I’m not going to assume that I know what the CEO of this firm should do and how they should change it.

All I know is I’m going to look at things and try and improve them within my ballywag and make the organization humble. And that’s really as far as you can take that question. So I hope you found this useful.

I hope you find it helpful. Hope you gave it a great review. And if you have questions for me, connect with me on LinkedIn at LinkedIn.com forward slash IN forward slash TheBigGameHunter.

And after we’re connected, message me. That’s also true if you’re interested in one on one coaching. So with one on one coaching, after we’re connected, let’s schedule a time for an introductory conversation.

Hope you have a great day. Take care

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