Question 4:
In behavioral assessment, what kind of questions would interviewers ask? any special tips you would like to share in this part?
Behavioral assessment is aimed at assessing personal attributes by asking behavioral questions. Depending on what's most important attributes for the company, you may expect questions like: "can you give me an example of when you faced a conflict/needed to work as a team/had to lead a team/had to be creative/faced with an ethical challenge…" The purpose of such questions are to assess if your personal attributes are aligned with the company requirements, in terms of conflict resolution, team work, leadership, creativity, ethics etc. etc.
Part of training for assessors is to ask follow up questions in specific details, so that the assessor is able to properly evaluate if the candidate's examples were true stories or simply a made-up one.Follow up detailed questions can be something like: "why did it happen? when did it exactly happen? Who were involved?How long did it take? What was your thought process at that moment?"
So the single most important tip is to prepare many of your little stories, particularly around: working in teams, creativity, and ethics;stories that can demonstrate your leadership, teamwork, conflict resolution,out-of-box thinking, working ethics and professionalism, etc.
Typical structure of such story can be: situation (context of what happened) ->complication (issues that required certain attributes to help resolve) ->solution (how you stepped up)and ->conclusion (how did this story tell about your attribute.
Question 5: What are stress questions?(40 sec)
Stress questions do not come out very frequently, but for some companies or positions that are high pressure, the interviewer might want to add some stress test to assess the candidate's response under pressure.
Most of the times, if you encounter some sudden changes during the interview, either in the form of the same interviewer changing the tone and attitude or a swap of an interviewer with a significantly more intense approach, congratulations! You have been doing well in the previous interview and now entering the final stage of a stress test.
Three typical examples of stress interview questions:
1. Direct (sometimes even confrontational) challenge of assumptions or logical fallacies – "Excuse me, your assumption is simply wrong, in reality it never works in the way you mentioned …"; "Sorry Mr. so and so, your logic doesn't make sense to me at all. Why do you think this way?"
Maintain calm and poised … "Mr. Interviewers, thanks for the feedback! Let's review the logic together. Can you explain a bit more about why the assumption never works? Or,if the assumption doesn't hold, based on your experience, what will be a valid assumption? Can you share a bit more about where you saw the logical flaws?" – putting a little positive pressure back on the challenger, and framing it as a joint problem solving exercise
2. Asking to exhaust the impossible – "so, you have considered impact of population, affordability, weather, what else? …. What else? What else? …" The interviewer may not know if there are any other answers but simply try to push the candidate to the extreme of his/her thinking process.
Maintain confident and collaborative … "I believe we have touched on most of the important on es so far. are there any other important dimensions that we should explore further?
3. Pretending the candidate has failed the interview –" Sorry Mr. so and so, unfortunately for this year, we have only a limited number of slots but a group of really high caliber candidates and you may not be at the top of the crowd. What will be your plan if you failed to pass the interview?"
Be positive and resilient …"Thanks Mr. Interviewer! I am glad the company/position has attracted such a great group of people. This just reconfirmed my choice of pursuing this opportunity and I am very proud to be a part of this group. I understand the candidates are all very strong, but I believe my unique strengths are …(reiterate your differentiators)."If asked further about the plan, " I would love to seek some specific feedbacks so that I can continuously improve myself. Keeping contact, so that we may have future opportunities to come together."
Under such situations, the candidate should know that it is a part of a normal interview process and in fact if you have not done well in the earlier parts of the interview, you will probably not have been asked such stress questions.
So, you are expected to maintain calm and positively responsive, as the interviewer will be observing your ability to think clearly and logically while maintaining your behavioral response under pressure.
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