How to Use Powerful, Popular Trick of Interviewers to Your Advantage

Behavioral Interviewing is a tactic used by human resources people and hiring managers to get more accurate, less fabricated answers from candidates during job interviews. Put simply, the technique involves asking candidates to describe how they would act in very specific situations, while avoiding any sort of leading that could hint at the correct answer.

For instance, rather than asking, "Do you have effective crisis-management experience?" the behavioral interview question would be something like "Let's say you had a situation in which your division's products were found to contain toxins that had injured a number of people. Describe how you would handle the situation."

A lot harder to make something up for that one, isn't it?

This technique is very effective in finding out the true nature of a potential employee's attitudes, experience, and methods. But job candidates can employ this same technique on interviewers to learn the true nature of the company, the position, and the manager's working methods -- priceless information that can decide whether or not the job is right for you.

Follow these key steps to turn interviewers' latest trick into your own powerhouse technique for determining if an employers' claims are true.

Decide in Advance What You Need to Know
Before you even get to the interview, think of what you want to know about the company and its methods. Then write down a list of questions that could potentially reveal such elements. For instance, if you want to find out whether the company manages employees in a positive, uplifting way, then put together a question such as, "Discuss a time when one of your employees wasn't performing up to your standards. How did you handle that?" If you just ask, "Describe your management style," he would say something like, "We lead by positive reinforcement." Nobody wants to hear that a company manages by threats and firings. But by asking him for specifics, you make it easier to tell if he's faking his answer -- there's too much stuff for most people to convincingly make up on the fly. Apply this trick to anything you want to learn the truth about in an interview.

Find the Right Time
Ideally, your interview will be a two-way conversation among professionals who respect each other. But instead it might be an inquisition. If so, save your questions until the end. Either way, be sensitive for the right time. Interviewers are used to asking behavioral questions, but they aren't used to getting them. Not yet anyway.

Ease Into it With Probing Questions
To find out if it's the right time for deeper, behavioral questions, warm your interviewer up with a few easy ones. Make them, short, easy, and positive. Get his guard softened up. If he seems to be taking questions well, go to your tougher, behavior-based ones.

Don't Make Him Squirm
If the interviewer is getting uncomfortable with your questions, you're probably hitting the jackpot in terms of information. But that doesn't mean you're winning the battle. Remember that your main objective in a job interview is to get the job offer. Interviewers can ask you all kinds of tricky questions because they have a lot more power than you do in the situation. If you make the interviewer squirm too much, he can just conveniently lose your phone number in the trash. So don't push too far.