New techniques probe job hunters' past

Career Monitor Janis Foord Kirk

People looking for work -- at all levels -- find interviews difficult. It's not easy to give someone you've never met before a clear sense of your background and to indicate how it relates to the job you're going after. That is, unless you're interviewed by someone so well versed in interview techniques, that you have no choice.

Imagine, for a moment, that you answered an advertisement about a month ago for a job that sounds perfect for you. It took a while but the company called last week to arrange an interview. Today's the day. The interview begins with questions about your knowledge and expertise. You're comfortable with these. You know you have the right background and training for the job. Then, the interviewer says: "I'd like to concentrate for a moment on how you organize your work. What skills do you use to manage your time?" This one catches you napping. But, you do have time management skills and you find a way to describe them. The next question is more specific: "Tell me about a time when setting goals helped to complete a program on time." And, a short while later: "Tell me about one of your projects that fell seriously behind schedule." You thought you'd prepared well for this interview, but you aren't ready for this. You find yourself foundering. The interviewer, sensing your discomfort, smiles encouragingly and begins to probe: "What was the project? What major obstacles did you encounter? How did you attempt to overcome those obstacles?" You're in the midst of what's called in personnel circles, a "behavioral description" interview. It's a new style of interview, and though not that common yet, one day soon, you might find yourself faced with one. Hiring mistakes are costly -- some experts suggest they cost a company about half of the yearly salary of the person who needs to be replaced. And, studies have found behavioral description interviewing to be the most accurate way to assess future performance on the job. So says Tom Janz, who along with Lowell Hellervik and David Gilmore pioneered the concept in the early '80s and co-wrote a book on the subject called, Behavioral Description Interviewing (distributed in Canada by Prentice Hall). Janz, who holds a Ph.D. in industrial organizational psychology, teaches at the University of Calgary. He's also a research partner with Drake Performance Technologies, a Calgary company that markets behavioral science technology. In a telephone interview, Janz said that behavioral description interviews predict future job performance more accurately than "traditional interviews, panel interviews, cognitive ability tests, and assessment centres. It has the highest accuracy in the published literature at this time." In their book, Janz and his colleagues explain the concept. "The best predictor of behavior in the future is behavior in the past," they write. People trained to conduct behavioral description interviews look for a story; or as the authors describe it, a "critical incident" from your past that will illustrate your skills and abilities in a specific situation. Interviewers are trained to probe, sometimes relentlessly, always kindly, for the information they want. Recruiting staff at the Royal Bank of Canada have been using such interviews for more than a year to recruit customer service representatives. Roy Samson, manager of recruitment and employment equity for the bank's metropolitan district, says that turnover in that area has decreased. He's careful to point out, however, that other factors -- the economy, for instance -- includes turnover as well. "People don't change jobs in a recession," he observed. Still, the behavioral description style of interviewing provides "relevant, job specific information," Samson says. "We ask questions directly related to past circumstances and how a person behaved in those circumstances. "For instance, I might say: ' Tell me about the last time you dealt with a customer who is unhappy with the service or product they'd been sold.' And, the person would say: ' Boy, that happens all the time.' "Then, I'd say: ' What I'd like you to do is recall the best example of that, something that stands out in your mind.' "And they'd say: ' Well, that happened a couple of weeks ago ... ' and then recite the story. It's almost like their replaying a video of their life. It's very pertinent, real information which gives a complete and accurate picture of an individual's behavior." If you're currently in the job market, be prepared to tell stories about circumstances from your past to illustrate your abilities on the job. Though the likelihood of encountering a behavioral description interview is still fairly small, preparation of this kind can pay off in any type of interview. Whether asked behavioral questions or not, you can dazzle the interviewer by relating stories about your past experiences that directly related to the job in question.

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