During the interview process, it is important to try to get a feel for any trends in behavior that a candidate may have. This a very important factor within the structured interview and other aspects of the candidate search that should be taken into consideration by an interviewer in order to try to find positive or negative aspects of candidate behavior. To find these behavior patterns, it is important to understand your own behavior as well:
It is my belief that before you and members of your interview team can begin to understand others, you need to understand your own behavioral patterns.
When talking about behavioral patterns, it is inappropriate to talk about strengths or weaknesses relative to behaviors themselves. However, it is relevant to talk about behaviors that are both important and counterproductive for a specific position.
We all have behavior patterns that are observable to others. Of the four behaviors described below, we all exhibit various aspects of each behavior. However, for most of us, there are aspects of those four behaviors that we use most frequently and aspects that we use less frequently or not at all. An experienced facilitator would be able to draw-out of any group of people the dominant behavior patterns of any member of that group, providing members of that group have worked with the person consistently for at least 3 months. As such, the facilitator would be able to get answers to the following behavior-based questions:
- What are the behavior patterns that a person exhibits most frequently?
- What behavior patterns seem to energize or motivate the person?
- When the person is under stress, what behaviors does he/she exhibit?
- Are any of the strongest behavior patterns overused (extreme) to the point that the behavior becomes a detriment to the performance of the person or to others (e.g., a strong willed person who must win every discussion)?
- What behavior patterns are least likely to be observed in the person?
While interviewing a candidate, it is likely that there will be some indicator of behavior patterns for each candidate. By becoming more familiar with these indicators and patterns, it is likely that the candidates you hire will be least likely to fail due to behavioral flaws.
