6 Words that Ruin Behavioral Interview Questions

culled from:wobi.com

Despite the variety of personalities and attitudes out there, you can still roughly categorize people into two groups: the problem bringers and problem solvers. When you ask a problem bringer about a problem, you'll hear about the problem and nothing more. We've all worked with these folks who can spend the day telling you about a problem without ever coming close to offering a solution.

By contrast, when you ask a problem solver about a problem, you'll hear about the problem, but you'll also hear some potential solutions. For these folks, separating problems and solutions is as ludicrous as separating wet from water.  No matter what particular attitude you're looking to hire, you'll want that person to have a problem solver predisposition.
 Let's look at how this applies to 3 common behavioral interview questions...

"Tell me about a time when you faced a difficult situation and what did you do to adapt?" may sound like a good question, but that six word phrase tagged on at the end "what did you do to adapt," and especially the word "adapt," sends a clear signal that you only want to hear about a time the candidate adapted (instead of the many times that person failed to adapt). For high performers this isn't such a big deal. These folks have plenty of real-life examples to offer and their problem-solving natures will instinctively lead them to tell you not only about the difficult situation, but also about the steps taken to adapt to that difficult situation.
The problem occurs with low performers who, while they may have faced countless difficult situations, are unlikely to have successfully adapted to any of them. In fact, the number of times problem bringers successfully adapted probably constitutes such a tiny fraction of the times they faced difficult situations that it would never even occur to them to search their mental databases and find the one instance where it happened. This leading question fails to give problem bringers the chance to disclose that information.

However, cut out the leading part, and all those problem bringer personalities will tell you all about a time they faced a difficult situation.  But unlike the problem solvers, they aren't going to offer up any information about how they solved the problem.
Now consider the leading question "Tell me about a conflict with a coworker and what you did to resolve it."   Notice the six word leading phrase tagged on at the end that asks about a resolution?  At this point you should recognize the signal it sends: forget about all the times you did not resolve the conflict with a coworker and just tell me about a time you did. But what if the candidate resolved the conflict once and failed to resolve it 500 times? By making this a leading question, you've lost all the data on the 500 episodes when there was no resolve.  From a hiring perspective, that's important information to know.

The same applies to the question "Tell me about a time when you had to successfully balance competing priorities."  "...had to balance competing priorities" aided by the word "successfully" is again a six word phrase that clues candidates to not tell you about all the times they struggled or failed to balance competing priorities (which is good information to have). Instead, low performing candidates will search their memory to find the one time they were able to balance priorities successfully and use that as an example.
Interview questions, and especially the behavioral ones, go wrong when they become leading questions that that explicitly or implicitly stop candidates from revealing their true sentiments. When I'm asked to evaluate an organization's interview questions, I usually find that at least two-thirds of an organization's behavioral questions are leading, and the flaw is often contained within a six-word phrase, typically tagged on at the end of the question.