How to succeed in your JOB INTERVIEW: Behavioral Questions

Think about your last job interview. What did you do to prepare for it, and how did it go? Job interviews are difficult whether you are an English learner or a native speaker. If you want to get the job, you need to prepare for the job interview. In many English-speaking countries, interviews often include behavioral questions. In this lesson, I will teach you about behavioral interview questions and how to answer them. This video also has a listening practice portion to train you to recognize these questions, as well as tips on how to prepare for them. Try our quiz at the end to practice what you have learned, nail that interview, and get that job! Then work like a dog for the rest of your life :)

Take the quiz: https://www.engvid.com/job-interview-behavioral-questions/

TRANSCRIPT

Hello. My name is Emma, and in today's video I am going to teach you how to do really well on your interview. So, if you're looking for a job and you have an interview coming up, I'm going to talk to you about a type of question you might hear during your interview. I'm going to tell you how to recognize this type of question, and how to answer this type of question, along with many tips that can help you. Okay? So if you're about to do an interview, don't stress out - we can do it.

All right, so let's look at the types of questions we're going to talk about today. Today we're talking about behavioural interview questions. Okay? So let's look at some examples to understand what I mean by "behavioural interview questions". Okay, so we have this question: "Tell me about a time when you worked effectively under pressure." So take a moment to think about that question. "Give an example of how you worked on a team.", "Describe a time when you had to deal with a very upset customer.", "Have you ever made a mistake? How did you handle it?" Okay, so when we're talking about behavioural questions, it's important to think about: What is being asked of you? Okay? So, the main thing with these types of questions is this word here: "Give an example". Behavioural questions... behavioural interview questions require that you give an example of how you have dealt with or handled a situation.

So, my next question to you is: Do you think we're talking about an example of the past, something that's happened; the present; or the future, something that could happen? So look at these questions. Are we talking about a past example, a present example, or a future example? If you said: "Past example", you are correct. When we talk about behavioural interview questions, what the interviewer is asking is they want you to give a past example. Okay? Something you have done in the past. How can you recognize these types of questions? Because there are many different interview types of questions, these are just one type, so how do you know if it's behavioural interview question? That's a very good question. One way to know is by looking for key words. Okay? So, a lot of the times behavioural questions start off with some sort of hint or clue. "Tell me about a time" is an example. Okay? "Tell me about a time when you worked effectively under pressure.", "Tell me about a time when you disagreed with your boss.", "Tell me about a time when you had problems with your co-workers." Okay? So lot of the times you will hear: "Tell me about" or "Tell me about a time", and that's a signal: Okay, this is probably a behavioural interview question. You might have this as a starter to the question, they might ask you: "Give me an example of how you worked on a team." or "Give me an example of a time when you showed leadership." Okay? So those would both be behavioural questions. Again: "Describe a time". A lot of the times you'll hear the word: "a time" or "an example". So this is another common phrase you will hear with behavioural interview questions. You might also have a question like this: "Have you ever made a mistake?", "Have you ever had difficulties working with somebody?", "Have you ever had a conflict with a customer?", "How did you handle it? What did you do?" So these types of questions, they don't have the same key words as the ones above, but usually they're written or they're said with the present perfect tense, and usually you'll hear a second follow-up question: "How did you handle it?" Okay? So, key word here: "did". If you hear the past tense in the question, then they probably want you to answer the question using a past example. Okay? So, this might be a little bit confusing, you might be a bit worried, you know: "Oh, these questions seem really hard." Well, the very first step is recognizing these questions, so that's what we're going to do right now. We are going to practice recognizing behavioural interview questions.

Okay, so now we are going to practice identifying behavioural interview questions. Okay? […]