Ask HN: What is the point of behavioral interview questions?

Clearly, the second guy should be throwing up red flags. However, it can be hard to uncover that type of thing if you were to only ask technical questions.

I don't think it was a coincidence that all of the really bad interviews/companies I've had also made extensive use of psychological evaluation/behavioral analysis questions. These things seem to go hand-in-hand.

To directly answer your question, I think the real intent behind behavioral questions is that there wasn't any intent, or much thought. People who ask these kinds of questions often ask them because they just googled for things like "how to conduct an interview", and "questions to ask during an interview". They found websites with examples of terrible psychological evaluation questions, but they don't really know why they are asking them or what they were supposed to get out the question.

What your are seeing here is monkey mimicry. Look at all the companies and hiring managers that have been mimicking what they think is great advice they got from how Big-Company-X (google/facebook/stanford/et-cetera) about how to hire great people. Remember all those stupid brain teaser tests?

In the few cases where some train of intelligent thought lead to someone asking these silly questions, they usually just want to push you a little to find out if they can make you snap easily, or get frustrated. This is an important and desirable trait in abusive workplaces because the employer doesn't want someone who is going to raise their hand and say, "excuse me, that's not right". Of course, it's important in good workplaces too, because they don't want someone who is overtly aggressive or displays an inability to be flexible in stressful situations, or gets easily flustered.

Think of the scene early on in the movie Blade Runner. (But try not to think about the fact that the position being interviewed for was a waste disposal job). Don't pull a Leon Kowalski in the interview.

The hiring process is a sieve; a gateway filter. What kinds of people are being let through, and what kinds of people are being filtered out by this style of hiring process? Paying attention to this will often gift you an awful lot of insight into how the company operates and what kinds of people you would potentially be working with.

There are other, more clever, ways of figuring out the behavioral profile of a potential worker without subjecting them to an abusive and insulting interrogatory, but they almost always take more time and effort, and really, who has time for that?

The most significant problem I have with psycho analysis questions is that if the interviewer is not qualified to interpret the results of their experiment, then that's a serious problem. And, how many of the HR goons you've met do you think have a degree in psychology, or have been training in interpreting the results of a psychological evaluation? None at all ever? Yea me too.

It's not entirely their fault. Hiring people is really hard! Even if you do put the candidate through a series of exhaustive tests and have qualified staff to administer and evaluate those tests, the result is still that sometimes it just doesn't work out, or the candidate ends up leaving for a better job after a few months.

For me, I turn the whole situation around. Behavioral analysis questions are a valuable source of information about the company. They are usually a display of mediocrity and thoughtlessness (but not always!), and those are usually not the kinds of organizations I want to work in.

If an interviewer asks me "Tell me about a time you got into an argument with you manager.", I like to turn it around at them and watch how they react: "I don't make it a point to get into arguments with my co-workers. What happens at work is business, and I don't let it get personal. But it really troubles me that you are so terribly concerned about conflicts in your...

As you said, communication is a necessary skill. Even in a world where email, text, etc are becoming normal means of communication, you need to be able to clearly communicate on a regular basis, extemporaneously and face-to-face with another person. Your ability to communicate your weaknesses and strengths well in an interview is absolutely essential to anyone during the hiring process. Quite frankly, most companies don't care if you're the absolute best in your technical field - if you can't match the culture of the office, you're only suited to remote freelancing - if that! Remember that HR has to constantly cover themselves - every employee is (potentially) a liability waiting to happen; if they hire someone who contributes to a negative/toxic work environment or is a sexual harassment risk (either as victim or aggressor), they're likely going to be fired for introducing that risk to the company. You have to tell HR in language they understand and can quantify that you are not a lawsuit risk.

The point is definitely not about prepared presentation, it's about being able to work and exist with other human beings like what HR calls "a normal person" - which is really a person with no negative qualities that will potentially endanger the company. Believe me, I've had a few red-flag interviews where the person came off very rude when I asked them about their personal and professional weaknesses; or when they had an issue with a manager. I've also had interviews that felt 'weird' because the person seemed to fixate on the gender of each of his previous managers.

Also, realize that some of these questions inform how interviewers view your references. If you list a certain manager as a reference, you're likely to be asked about a time you had a frustrating experience with that specific person as a manager - oh, and as a side note, if you're asked for three references in a tech field, do everything in your power to include one opposite-sex individual. When we call to confirm the reference, we will in turn ask the reference about that same incident with you as an employee - what happened, what caused the situation, and how it was resolved. We can't do a proper 360 evaluation on you, but we can certainly try to see a more full picture from the people you mention as references and their answers to questions about your conduct.

Your technical skills are either there at the level the employer's needed level, or they aren't - in the latter case you got filtered either by the ATS or someone like I used to be. It's the interpersonal skills which aren't well-described by a resume.

One other thing - "He's a great guy and really good at resolving interpersonal challenges" is a stronger internal selling point from a recruiter to an HR hiring manager than you'd immediately think. Remember, the default for the company is that you're too expensive - some recruiters (internal and third-party) have to justify not offshoring a role before they can even begin suggesting candidates. If you're not going to contribute to the office positively and the HR manager thinks you're going to be a challenge or a danger, you will not get hired.