by Peter Fisher

Created on: July 06, 2009

You need to know how to succeed in a behavioral based job interview if up until now you have only ever come up against interviews that follow the commonplace 'what did you do here' or 'why did you go there' type of interview, based around your CV or resume information.

An interesting departure from this is the behavioral based interview where the interviewer is looking for specific evidence of a particular set of abilities or competences. This is also a very common style of interview initially used by recruitment officers who aimed to gauge competency levels through examining the applicant's ability to carry himself/herself in such situations.

Like the standard interview there will often be a "background review" to get things moving but after that they will move into a set of questions which will be the same for every candidate to determine whether you've got the level of competence or ability in the areas they want for the particular job.

Many companies call this type of structured interview the 'STAR' routine which stands for:

* Situation

* Task

*Action

* Result

So what they actually want is for you to:

1. Outline a Situation where you used the particular ability or competence or the Task that you had to do;

2. Describe the Action that you took;

3. Summarise the Results of your actions.

This may sound complex, but it's actually a very straightforward interview to master because they let you know beforehand what competences or abilities they intend to cover and that makes it much easier to prepare your skills statements!

A typical set of competences they might want to explore in a behavioral based job interview could be:

* Planning and Organising
* Motivational Fit
* Customer Service Orientation
* Teamwork & Collaboration
* Problem Solving
* Work Standards
* Communication
* Delegation
* Initiative

With knowledge of the STAR routine and your prepared skills statements you'll have no trouble with this one!

So where do your competences come from? Competence comes from your skills! Before you set off, think about a definition of each of the competences above, as it relates to your job.

Then you must work out how you can relate a short story describing how you do each thing with an example to illustrate it.

Here are some examples...

1. Planning and Organizing is possessing the ability to establish appropriate courses of action for self and /or others to accomplish a specific goal; planning proper assignments of personnel and appropriate

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