Why do the companies ask soooo many behavioral questions for interview

[camanchaca]

Originally Posted by Jjury15

Do you get this information from references or how they act in an interview? Wouldn't a phone screen have done all that hard work for you if you observed these things during an in-person?

Also, would you rather hire the jerk over the quiet person? Which is seen as worse to you?

From the interview, and I would much rather hire a quiet person who gets along with people than a jerk.

It's not always easy to tell. From the example I mentioned earlier, if the fourth interviewer had been a dude we might have ended up making an offer, and that would have been a disaster. I don't usually do phone screens, and when I do they only last maybe ten minutes, which is not usually enough time for me to determine much beyond 'this person is a disaster.'

I don't think my company even asks for references, I don't remember providing them when I got hired.

Originally Posted by 43north87west

There's a flaw upstream in your hiring process somewhere.

In that we aren't sufficiently pre-screening against jerks?

[Francois]

Originally Posted by oldtrader

Behavioral questions etc., are asked for one reason. The applicant cannot practice for them. Many people practice with someone asking them questions that are technical, and they just give canned answers when asked. It does not give the interviewer any knowledge of how the person will react if aske about a problem at work. They are asked these questions they cannot practice or be prepared for, to find if they can think on their feet and answer questions no matter what they are.

Yes but, the job interview is known to be one of the most stressful situations there is. People DO prepare for them and SHOULD prepare for behavioral questions since they are more and more common, so the "think on your feet" might not even be getting at that. But worse, throwing a curve and asking someone "Tell us a time you failed" will spin the candidate into second-guess land and if they are NOT prepared, they will probably falter and it could ruin the rest of the interview. Thus, candidates are now "trained" to prepare for these questions--debunking your whole theory.

Personally I think job interviews in general can only tell a small amount about what someone is going to be once they've gotten the job and are not in a high-stress "make them like me" situation (a sales job is different; they have to impress strangers every day and deal with curve balls, but an office job usually is not of the same nature of a high-stress job interview). Really I think more weight should be put on references from former employers, who have an objective idea of the work that person produces. Of course, this assumes the former employers are honest and give good-faith references. I knew someone once who knew a good employee was interviewing elsewhere and he actuall boasted to someone on his team that he was going to give the guy a bad reference so they wouldn't hire him away [this quickly got back to the higher-ups and this manager was demoted].

I personally can talk forever about what I do and what I've done, but behavioral "trick questions" like "what about a time when you forgot something?" can send a candidate spinning into wondering what they are looking for and fumble. Personally I tend to block out the really negative things that have happened at work (few and minor though they have been) so it's hard for me to come up with "negative" behavioral answers. Putting a candidate ill at ease is a bad way to interview unless it's a PR-type job, IMHO.

And no, this kind of question doesn't measure "fit for the team", it measures "pulling things out of the air" sometimes.