Behavioral Interviewing: How to Hire the Right Employees and Reduce Costs

Hiring the wrong employee can be expensive. In addition to reopening the position, an organization may have to repeat advertising, screening, interviewing, onboarding, and training. Meanwhile, managers and coworkers absorb extra work, productivity slows, and customers may feel the effects.

Behavioral interviewing helps organizations make more informed hiring decisions before those costs begin to accumulate. Instead of relying primarily on first impressions or hypothetical answers, interviewers ask candidates for specific examples of how they handled relevant situations in the past.

When behavioral interviewing is combined with a structured process and clear evaluation criteria, employers gain a more consistent, job-focused way to identify people who are equipped to succeed.

What Is Behavioral Interviewing?

Behavioral interviewing is a technique in which candidates are asked to describe real situations from their previous experience. Questions commonly begin with phrases such as:

• “Tell me about a time when…”
• “Describe a situation in which…”
• “Give me an example of…”
• “Walk me through how you handled…”

The approach is based on a practical principle: past behavior in circumstances similar to the job can provide useful evidence about how a person may perform in the future. It is not a guarantee or a crystal ball. It is a way to replace vague impressions with concrete, job-related information.

For example, an interviewer could ask, “Are you good at resolving conflict?” Most candidates will answer yes. A behavioral interview question produces more useful evidence:

Tell me about a time when you had to resolve a disagreement between coworkers or stakeholders. What did you do, and what was the result?

The interviewer can then explore the candidate’s role, actions, reasoning, and results.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management describes structured interviews as assessments that systematically examine past or proposed behavior related to job competencies. Candidates receive the same core questions and are evaluated against the same standards.

Behavioral Interviewing Versus a Traditional Interview

A traditional, loosely structured interview may feel natural, but it can easily drift into a general conversation. Different candidates may be asked different questions, and interviewers may reach decisions based on chemistry, similarity, confidence, or intuition.

Behavioral interviewing creates greater discipline.

Traditional approach	Structured behavioral approach
Questions may vary significantly by candidate	Candidates receive the same core, job-related questions
Answers are often hypothetical or general	Candidates provide specific examples from experience
Decisions may rely heavily on overall impressions	Responses are rated against defined criteria
Interview notes can be inconsistent	Interviewers document comparable evidence
Strong conversational style may influence the outcome	The focus remains on competencies and demonstrated behavior

Structure does not mean the interview must feel robotic. Interviewers can still build rapport and ask appropriate follow-up questions. The difference is that every candidate receives a fair opportunity to demonstrate the competencies required for the position.

Why Is Behavioral Interviewing Useful?

It connects interview questions to the job

Effective behavioral questions start with the work itself. Before interviewing, the hiring team identifies the competencies that distinguish successful performance—such as problem-solving, accountability, adaptability, communication, leadership, or attention to detail.

Each question is then designed to uncover evidence related to one of those competencies.

This makes the interview more relevant than a collection of generic questions. It also helps the hiring team distinguish between a candidate who interviews well and one who has demonstrated the behaviors the role requires.

It produces richer evidence

Candidates can prepare polished answers to questions such as “What is your greatest strength?” It is harder to manufacture a detailed account of a real event while answering thoughtful follow-up questions.

A behavioral answer allows the interviewer to examine:

• The situation and its complexity
• The candidate’s individual responsibility
• The actions the candidate personally took
• The reasoning behind those actions
• The measurable or observable result
• What the candidate learned

These details help interviewers evaluate what the person actually did—not merely what the person says they would do.

It improves consistency

When interviewers use shared questions, rating scales, and success criteria, candidate comparisons become clearer. Research summarized by OPM indicates that higher interview structure is associated with stronger validity, rater reliability, and agreement among interviewers.

Consistency is especially valuable when multiple managers or panelists participate in hiring. Rather than debating who “felt like the best fit,” the team can compare documented evidence against the same requirements.

It can reduce the influence of bias

No interview process removes bias completely. However, standardized questions and scoring criteria can limit the amount of discretion that allows first impressions, personal similarities, or unrelated preferences to dominate a decision.

A structured process keeps the discussion centered on a defensible question: What evidence did each candidate provide that they can perform this job successfully?

How Behavioral Interviewing Can Reduce Hiring Costs

Behavioral interviewing requires preparation, but that investment can prevent larger expenses later.

1. It lowers the risk of repeating the hiring process

When a new employee leaves quickly or cannot perform the role, the organization may need to start again. That means more job advertising, recruiter time, interviews, background checks, onboarding, and training.

A stronger interview process cannot eliminate every unsuccessful hire, but it can reduce avoidable mistakes by identifying job-relevant evidence before an offer is made.

2. It helps protect productivity

An employee who lacks a critical competency may require additional supervision, create rework, miss deadlines, or shift responsibilities to teammates. Those effects have real operational costs even when they never appear as a separate line in the budget.

Behavioral questions help the employer test for those competencies at the selection stage. For example, a role requiring independent judgment should include questions that explore situations in which the candidate had to make decisions with incomplete information.

3. It can support better retention through stronger fit

“Fit” should not mean hiring people who resemble the current team. It should mean alignment between the candidate and the actual demands of the job, including its responsibilities, pace, working conditions, collaboration needs, and performance expectations.

When the interview explores these factors honestly, both sides can make a more informed decision. That can reduce early departures caused by mismatched expectations.

4. It makes interviewer time more efficient

An interview guide prevents managers from inventing questions moments before an interview. Reusable competency-based questions, follow-up prompts, and rating criteria reduce preparation time while improving consistency.

The result is a repeatable process that can be used across candidates, interview panels, and future openings.

5. It creates information that improves onboarding

Behavioral interviewing can reveal both strengths and development needs. If the selected candidate has strong customer-management experience but limited exposure to a particular internal process, the organization can address that gap in the onboarding plan.

The interview therefore becomes useful beyond selection. It provides an early foundation for training, coaching, and performance expectations.

How to Use Behavioral Interviewing to Find the Right Employee

A strong behavioral interview process follows several practical steps.

Define success before writing questions

Identify the four to six competencies that matter most for the position. Base them on job analysis, conversations with successful employees, performance expectations, and the situations the new hire will regularly encounter.

Avoid a long list of generic qualities. Prioritize what is genuinely required for success.

Create one or more questions for each competency

If adaptability is important, ask:

Tell me about a time when an important priority changed unexpectedly. How did you respond?

If accountability matters, ask:

Describe a mistake you made that affected a project or customer. What actions did you take afterward?

Questions should request a specific event rather than an opinion or philosophy.

Use focused follow-up questions

Candidates sometimes begin with vague answers or describe what “we” did. Helpful probes include:

• What was your individual role?
• What did you do first?
• What alternatives did you consider?
• What was the outcome?
• How did you measure success?
• What would you do differently now?

Follow-up questions should clarify the evidence, not lead the candidate toward a preferred answer.

Establish a scoring guide

Define what weak, acceptable, and strong evidence looks like for each competency. Interviewers should record evidence and assign ratings independently before discussing candidates as a group.

This helps prevent one panelist’s enthusiasm from shaping everyone else’s initial evaluation.

Use a blended selection process

Behavioral interviewing is powerful, but it should not be the only hiring tool. Depending on the role, employers may also need technical questions, work samples, credential verification, reference checks, or realistic job previews.

The goal is not to force every hiring decision into a single method. It is to combine relevant methods in a deliberate, consistent process.

Build Better Interviewing Skills With Evolve

Interviewing is a professional skill, and even experienced managers benefit from practice.

Evolve e-Learning Solutions offers the totalView™ Behavioral Based Interviewing Toolkit, a six-course online program featuring the OMNIview approach and Vado courseware. The toolkit addresses interviewing fundamentals, recognizing behavioral responses, evaluating candidate answers, conducting professional interviews, using a blended interview process, and understanding legal considerations.

Designed for HR professionals, recruiters, hiring managers, learning teams, and organizational leaders, the program takes approximately 3 to 3.5 hours to complete and can be delivered through Evolve’s hosted learning platform or an organization’s existing LMS.

By giving interviewers a shared process and practical tools, organizations can move beyond instinct-led hiring and make decisions based on consistent, job-related evidence.

Better Interviews Lead to Better Hiring Decisions

Behavioral interviewing does more than change the questions asked during an interview. It changes the quality of the hiring decision.

With clearly defined competencies, standardized behavioral interview questions, thoughtful follow-up, and consistent scoring, employers can compare candidates more fairly and identify the people most likely to succeed in the role. That can mean fewer avoidable hiring mistakes, less repeated recruiting and training, better use of management time, and stronger long-term performance.

The right employee is not always the most polished interviewer. The right employee is the person whose experience and behavior provide the strongest evidence of success.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the main purpose of behavioral interviewing?

Behavioral interviewing gathers specific examples of how a candidate has handled situations related to the competencies required for a job. It gives interviewers more useful evidence than general opinions or hypothetical claims alone.

What is an example of a behavioral interview question?

An example is: “Tell me about a time when you had to manage several competing priorities. How did you decide what to do first, and what was the outcome?”

How does behavioral interviewing reduce hiring costs?

It can lower the risk of a poor match, repeated recruitment, unnecessary retraining, productivity disruption, and early turnover. It also gives managers a reusable process that makes interviews more efficient.

Does behavioral interviewing eliminate hiring bias?

No method eliminates bias entirely. Consistent job-related questions, shared rating standards, trained interviewers, and evidence-based scoring can reduce opportunities for unrelated preferences to influence decisions.

Should behavioral interviews replace skills tests?

Not necessarily. Behavioral interviews are often most effective when combined with appropriate work samples, technical assessments, reference checks, and other job-related selection methods.