One of the most accurate hiring techniques which is ideal for evaluating skills and competencies necessary for effective job performance is to use behavioral, situational interviewing questions and some standard interview questions.

Behavioral interviewing, as opposed to traditional interviewing, evaluates candidates' past performance by having job candidates describe specific stories, examples, experiences, and results that indicate their ability to perform certain job tasks and responsibilities. Typically, a candidate is asked to provide a description of the situation, task, action, and result in response. Examples of behavioral interview questions include:

• Provide an example of...
• Tell me about an experience when...
• Describe how you did....

Situational interviewing looks at the future. Candidates are presented with a potential problem that they need to think about and come up with a solution to the problem at hand. With the situational interview technique, you are testing the candidates' ability to solve the problems at hand, intelligence, knowledge, and expertise in the field. Situational interviews are reliable indicators about how a candidate will handle situations in the future, because chances are that if a candidate is able to adequately solve the problem, he would also perform that same action if put in that situation.

The only real issues with situational questions are that they do not give the interviewer insight as to your past work history, nor do they show the interviewer how you value your answers. For example, if you are asked a behavioral question about your greatest professional mistake, and you talk about how you mouthed off to a supervisor, that will tell the interviewer that you consider how you treat co-workers as more important than whether or not you made a mistake on a project.

These days, employers do not often use one type of interview question throughout the interview. Most likely, you will experience some behavioral, some situational, and some standard interview questions. That is why it is important that you prepare for all types of interview questions, including both situational and behavioral. Details to take in to consideration when using behavioral and situational interviewing include:

• Give behavior and situational training to the hiring managers, supervisors, and any employee in a hiring role
• Update your job information such as job descriptions, performance objectives, and so on
• Carefully identify the behavior or soft skill you are looking for in a job candidate
• Be tool-prepared for the interview--use note-taking sheets, score-sheets, and forms, and interview guides with the behavior and situational queries
• Be consistent--ask the same core questions to all the candidates, but you can vary the probing
• Be self-aware of your biases as an interviewer, such as having a favorable opinion about the candidates similar to you, or just rely on your intuition