Hiring managers use a variety of structured and structured ways of interviewing to assess the fitment of a potential recruit in an organisation, across all levels of hierarchy. Some methods use business cases, some use psychometric instruments, some use the simple traditional face to face questioning method. All of the above methods provide an opportunity to evaluate candidate’s personality, cognitive abilities and his/her fitment in the organisation’s culture. In evolved organisations, one of most preferred methods used by hiring managers is the use of psychometric assessments.

While psychometric instruments provide a comprehensive evaluation of candidates cognitive ability and personality, what is does not measure is the response of the candidate in a realistic business situation. This is where an advanced method of structured interviewing, as known Behavioural Event Interview (BEI) comes in. As a method, BEI gathers evidence of past behaviour against a well- defined competency framework; which provides a highly reliable indication of likely future performance in the role so long as the role and work environment remains stable in the future.

As against traditional interviews, BEI is a dynamic form of interviewing. In this method, the interviewee is guided to tell about both successful and unsuccessful outcomes in recent business roles whilst the interviewer skilfully probes and clarifies exactly how success was achieved. Owing to the reason that the interviewee is recalling their actual behaviours with regards to a particular business situation, accurate recall is enhanced and even the most nervous interviewees are given the best chance to accurately portray evidence of their strengths and weaknesses.

It is this dynamic style, which differentiates behavioural event interviewing from more traditional, structured or critical incidence interviewing. The experience is more pleasant for the Interviewee and more profitable for the interviewer in terms of gaining an accurate picture.

Empirical evidence suggests that Behavioural Event Interviewing has shown approximately 50% more predictive validity than traditional interviewing and research suggests it is especially effective when evaluating candidates for senior roles. This method is used to capture evidence of individual performance against a set of business situations within the framework of a competency model that is required to succeed in a dynamic and challenging role. As said earlier, research shows that the best evidence of future performance is found in the evidence of the behavioural competencies that the interviewee has displayed in the past.

Accordingly, during this type of selection interview, the role of the interviewer is to collect and collate as much evidence as possible of the behaviours that the candidate demonstrated in some specific situations. This demonstration is used to evaluate whether the correct competency was displayed and whether it was displayed at a particular role for the intended role.

While BEI is an effective method of selection interview, there is a caveat that needs to be kept in mind. As this interview process places a lot of emphasis on the interviewing skills of the interviewer to collect and collate detailed evidence during an interview, consistency in the application of the skill and the following of the right process is extremely important to get the right results. Consistency and is best achieved by the interviewer undergoing formal training to learn the skill of BEI.

GrowthSqapes’ programme on BEI enables you to develop the skill of BEI which is critical to ensure success of the interview process and select the right candidate.

This blog has been written by Satyakki Bhattacharjee, Managing Partner at GrowthSqapes.