Behavioral Interviewing vs. Sticking a Fork in Your Eye - Marlborough, MA

Photo credit: revision3.com

Today's ReacHIRE class was about "Surviving the Behavioral Interview."  I think we could re-title it "Which would you rather? Stick a fork in your eye or get asked about a time you failed?" Well, okay, that's a little long.  But before I get into that, I must first tell you about our host company's awesomeness. Without telling you the awesome company's name. 

We were hosted out in Marlborough by a large medical company. A locally-grown company that has recently moved headquarters into farm country. At least I think of Marlborough (when I don't think of smoking cowboys) as farm country--my gorgeous 35-minute drive from home was past colonial homes, Christmas tree farms, and Assabet Wildlife Refuge. A small-road commute. Love. If I have to commute by car, gimme a single lane road with an absence of deer and snow (yeah, I know, it's December and it kind of feels like for whom the bell tolls...). 

So Awesome Host Company (AHC for short) set us up in a nice space called the Collaboratory (catchy, no?). On our way to the Collaboratory, we walked like hamsters in a habitrail (do they still sell these things?) from one building to another through glass windowed above-ground tunnels. And I saw the first glimpse that I would love this company--signs for Service Animals down certain corridors. Perhaps the nightmare I had last week about being late to this day (I wasn't) and with my dog mysteriously in my car was AHC-sent? Next time I have this nightmare I will admonish myself that perhaps Coal will be invited to stay. Probably not as he has a habit of eating everything off the tops of tables.

Anyway, after snagging a coffee and some fruit (note that this medical company had healthy breakfast and healthy lunch for us--I was hoping for scones and fries, but no luck), we sat down. First we heard about the businesses of AHC--and let me tell you only that they do some very cool research and have massively important products --- and why the company thinks the ReacHIRE program is great. I love to hear that companies think it is great because I do too.

Then we were briefed by our ReacHIRE human resources associate on what exactly is a behavioral interview. In a nutshell it's a process that uses past behavior as a predictor of future performance. My 9-year old twins had better hope that they do not meet this interview to get into private school (if they do go someday) because it's going to get ugly on the past behavior. And good luck to all you real criminals out there.

Behavioral interviewing uses open-ended questions that are  not easy to answer off-cuff. Here are three of the ones (8 pages of them!) that we were provided prior to our class today:

1. What situation has motivated you to put in extra effort?
2. Tell me a time when you took a stand on something? What resistance did you encounter and how did you overcome this? (by the way, this particular question was asked by the mock interviewer--and I was prepared, yay me!)
3. Give me some examples of when you've shown initiative at work.

And on and on. These are tough questions, especially for some of us who have been away from paying jobs for a while. Sure I could use examples from my volunteering with Wellesley and college application mentoring but it's important to also have "real-life" (as if volunteering is not real) examples. Actually number 2 would be awesome to answer as a mom: like when I took a stand on no screens before 5 pm, and I can tell you how successfully I did with my minecraft-obsessed mini-men. Or not.

To prepare for the interview, I trotted out my career story last night and thought about it. I like my career story. I don't really know if anyone else does, but I do. I loved my alma mater, my taking a chance on San Francisco, working at Visa, going for my MBA at Kellogg, moving to Brazil, etc. It makes me proud. But then I have to communicate it, right? 

One of the most important learnings for me on answering interview questions is the methodology of Circumstance Action Result. In each response, I needed to include circumstance (context or real life-situation), then actions I took to resolve it and then what was the result, hopefully quantifiable. It is a helpful framework in answering any question anywhere. 

After a few minutes of practice with our cohort, we broke up into groups of two cohort members and two AHC managers--one was a hiring manager, and one was a talent acquisition person. These were mock interviews--not one of us was trying for a job at AHC (yet...). It was completely amazing to have these corporate managers take at least two hours out of their days to meet with us, interview us, and then give us feedback on our answers. 

It helped to have a ReacHIRE colleague in the interview process--I went second so I could hear how she answered certain questions and answer them in my mind. We have much different work histories but similar interests, and the manager who interviewed us was in our field (marketing). The interviewing manager was helpful about telling us how to make some answers better, how to really build the stories and which buzz words are current in his industry. He almost caught me off-balance when he asked me if I had any questions for him about working with AHC (pretending it was a real interview) but I had some up my sleeve. Good fun.

I no longer want to stick a fork in my eye rather than interview. I have a lot of work to do, of course, especially in remembering the results of long-ago projects. As in last week's. Does anyone remember Thanksgiving? Try a C-A-R on that. 

Now, in the comment box below, please tell me how you would answer this one: "Did you achieve your objectives for last year? How do you know?"   Go.