Q 1 What is Behavioral Event Interview?

Behavioral Event Interview (BEI) is a structured interview usually used when selecting employees. It
gathers information about the history of an applicant as a means of predicting future performance.

The interviewer, either a member or HR staff or a manager, ask open-ended questions and map the
subject's behavior in situations where he or she had to demonstrate key competencies required for the
given position.

BEI helps us and our company in following ways:

 BEI is an objective, fair and reliable tool for evaluating and comparing candidates and
employees.
 BEI helps you to set clear criteria for employee selection or assessment.
 BEI helps you to eliminate bias in assessment.
 BEI helps you set reliable expectations regarding employees' future performance.

Importance of BEI:

It’s important to assess whether the candidate demonstrates qualities that fit your workplace culture.
BEI questions solicit real-life experiential responses that provide a way to evaluate skills, knowledge, and
behaviors versus philosophical views. The candidate’s responses are a true indication of how the
candidate will behave and perform in future work-related situations.

Behavioral competency assessment is an integral part of the performance management process in high
performing organizations.

Use of BEI:

Behavioral Event Interviewing is helpful for anyone conducting an interview, particularly the hiring
manager. The technique works well in a multiple- interviewer scenario. Various questions can be
assigned to members of the interview team, or the hiring manager can seek multiple perspectives if the
same questions are asked by more than one member.

When is BEI used?

Behavioral Event Interviewing can be used to evaluate candidates for any open position. A critical
success factor in selecting the best candidate is seeking adequate information to assess whether the
candidate’s skills, education, experience, and behavioral traits are a good match with the key job
requirements and your organization’s culture.

How to Conduct BEI?

The objective of BEI is to get very detailed behavioral description of how a person goes about doing his
or her work. The interviewer asks other questions, but these are either designed to set the stage or to
lead people to provide critical-incident “short-stories”. The interviewer’s job is to keep pushing for
complete stories that describe the specific behaviors, thoughts and actions the interviewee has shown in
actual situations.

The following guidelines will help interviewer prepare to do a BEI:

1) Know who you will be talking to: Learn the name of the person to be interviewed and how to
pronounce it correctly, his or her job title and something of what the job involves, and what the person
organization does. Interviewers, should not however, know whether the person they are interviewing is
rated as a superior or average performer. This can bias the interview. If the person is known to be a
superstar, you may ask leading questions that give him an unequal opportunity to say how good they
are. If they have been identified as average, you may not interview them with equal interest or support
and thus limit their opportunity to provide useful data.

2) Arrange a Private Place and 1 ½ hour to 2 hours of Uninterrupted Time for the Interview: The
interview should not take place where others can overhear you. It may be best for the interview to be
away from the interviewee’s office and interruptions from the telephone or visitors.

3) Arrange to Tape Record the Interview: Whenever possible, tape-record and make transcriptions of a
BEI. Besides being much less work for the interviewer, BEI transcripts are invaluable for capturing the
exact nuances of interviewee’s motives and thought process. Interviewer notes often miss rich details
that can help identify competencies.

4) Know What You Will Say: Memorize the scripts provided in the following sections for each step of the
Behavioral Event Interview. Interviewers have found that preparing a prompt to remind them of what to
say at each step is very helpful in learning to do a BEI and in summarizing data.

Behavioral Event Interview Outline: BEIs contain five steps. The steps are as follows:

 Introduction and Explanation: Introducing yourself and explaining the purpose and format of
the interview.
 Job Responsibilities: Getting the interviewee to describe his or her most important job tasks and
responsibilities.
 Behavioral Events: Asking the interviewee to describe, in detail, the five or six important
situations he or she has experienced in the jobs. Two or Three High Points or Major Success and
Two or Three Low Points or key failure.
 Characteristics needed to do the job: Asking the interviewee to describe what he or she thinks
it takes for someone to do the job effectively.
 Conclusion and Summary: Thinking the interviewee for his or her time and summarizing key
incidents and findings from the interview.
Pros and Cons of Behavioral Interview:

Following are the Pros of BEI:

 We get real-life examples to help us assess how someone will perform in the future. There is
always something we can learn from what a candidate states or doesn’t state in an interview
answer.
 We can get into deeper detail than other interview questions. With a couple of probing
questions beyond an initial response, you can reveal some important details about a candidate
that may not come out in other interview formats. For example, you can get specific details
about a candidate’s real contribution to a project, or find out how they dealt with an
unpredictable circumstance.
 The focus storytelling enables almost all candidates to interview more effectively.   Let’s face it:
Interviewing is scary for most people. Some people will always be better storytellers than
others, but it’s in every human’s DNA to be able to convey a story. Even candidates who are
naturally shy or introverted —tendencies that inhibit their ability to sell themselves — can come
alive when you ask them a behavioral interview-style question. It is much more comfortable and
easy for a candidate to tell you a story than respond to a firing squad of questions.

Following are the Cons of BEI:

 Questions must be designed with behavior in mind. Behavioral interviewing is certainly the
best predictor of future behavior, but if we don’t design the questions correctly, the information
we receive may not enable better decision making. Even if you think your behavioral questions
are designed perfectly, consider whether they will elicit the behavior you are seeking to
measure.
 Don’t ask leading questions. If you tell the candidate what you are trying to discern before you
ask the actual question, it’s like giving them the answer on a test. For example, making a
statement like, “Team work is very important here” before you ask a question about a
candidate’s work experience on a group project is a bit leading. They already know what you are
assessing.  Try to stick to questions without leading with qualifying statements.
 The interviewer must still control the interview. Asking this level of open-ended questions
(questions that require a thoughtful answer beyond a simple yes or no) can send you “down a
rabbit hole” in many situations. Candidates are nervous in interview situations and have a
tendency to ramble on or focus on details that are not relevant to the information you are
seeking. You must be able to re-focus the discussion and stay on track.
 The storytelling technique is another excellent way for an interviewer to relay information to a
candidate. Candidates, like anyone else, have a tendency to hear what they want to hear as
opposed to what you intend them to hear. If you want to make a point they will remember,
consider telling anecdotal stories that will help a candidate truly understand what the position is
about and what kinds of results you are looking for.
Limitations of BEI:

 BEIs are time and labor intensive. Up to a full day can be required to conduct an interview and
then analyze the data.
 A highly trained and skilled interviewer is essential to obtain accurate information. The
interviewer must have strong analytical ability and experience in competency identification to
accurately infer the competencies.
 BEIs are not practical for analyzing a series of jobs because of the time, expense, and expertise
required for administration and data analysis.
 BEIs focus solely on current and past behaviors, which may be different from those needed in
the future.
 Because BEIs focus on critical incidents, the competencies needed for the more routine aspects
of work may be missed.
 The data collected may not be widely accepted by stakeholders because it is provided by a small
number of interviewees.

Q 2 Competency Mapping Procedures and Steps:

Following are the procedures and steps for Competency Mapping:

Procedure:

 A job analysis is conducted by requesting individuals to fill a position information questionnaire.

Questionnaire asks them to describe what they are doing, and what skills, attitudes and abilities
they need to have to perform it well. One on one interview can also be used to gather data. The
main objective is to gather data from employees about the key behaviors essential to perform
their respective work.
 Making use of the results of the job analysis, you are ready to create a competency based job
description. This competency based job description is presented to the HR department for their
agreement and additions if any. It is developed after thoroughly examining the input from the
represented group of employees and transforming it to standard competencies.
 Once we have competency based job description, we start the process of mapping the
competencies. The competencies of the particular job description become factors for
assessment on the performance evaluation. Making use of competencies, you can perform more
objective evaluations determined by displayed or not displayed behaviors.  Feedback can be
given to the participant about the competencies that has been assessed and where they stand.
 A detailed report is prepared of the competencies assessed and also the development plan for
the developmental areas. The outcomes of assessment can be employed to identify what
competencies employees require. Additional development or training can be provided to
employees. This will help employees in achieving the objectives of the organization.
Steps:

1. Identify key components of employee job descriptions - The critical points only focus on what
characteristics and skills are absolutely essential to get the job done. Remember that job
descriptions often serve different purposes when posting a position than is needed to explain
the role's responsibilities.
2. Clarify roles and eliminate superfluous information - narrow the scope again. Look through
your essential words and phrases. Ask yourself whether you have more words than needed to
describe the essential characteristics. Then ask yourself whether the role's responsibilities are
clear. How do they align to the task? The team's mission? The overall organizational strategy? If
they don't, back to the drawing board.
3. Identify required aptitudes, attitudes, skills, and knowledge for roles - critical components of
the competencies are what are beneath the surface of employee behavior. Like an iceberg, we
see only what is above water, but realize the vast majority is underneath. These values,
underlying skills, and approach to work are what you're after. Identify what you need for a
successful employee.
4. Synthesize ideas into central themes and define them - no more than 10 competencies. You
will get mired in the assessment and analysis portion if you don't narrow it down to the critical
few. Start researching other similar organizations and the competencies they require of
employees. Look to the K-12 educational sector. There's quite a bit of knowledge about teacher
competencies that will likely align very well with your team.
5. Create a five-scale rubric system - describe what a novice looks like for each competency. What
about your expert? What does performance at each level in between look like? What are the
skills, aptitudes, and knowledge required at the minimum for each level? Here's where you will
want to clearly describe the behaviors exhibited by individuals who perform at each level on the
novice-to-expert scale. Ask others to review your list. Would they know what is expected to
perform at each level? If not, it's back to the drawing board.
6. Build assessments - organize your set of questions aimed at identifying level of alignment for
each of the five scales you've designed. Don't just ask questions that measure whether someone
is an expert. Look for open ended questions such as "describe how you would do..." or "explain
what you did when you were able to accomplish..." Ask your candidates multiple layered
questions. Never, ever, ask a question that can be answered with a "yes or no." You're looking
for depth of answer here so that you can evaluate how well it fits to your rubric.
7. Build logistics for roll-out and on-going measurement cycles - this is the fun part! You build a
list of competencies, defined them, built rubrics to assess level of competency on a novice-to-
expert scale. Now you need to launch your program. Pay attention to your audience. Are they a
group of people with test anxiety? Do they prefer written or oral assessment? Would they be
excited to show where they are at as far as their performance? The program will lose its luster if
you only do it once. Build a plan for continuous assessment - but don't go crazy with it. Twice a
year is probably more than enough. Use the time in between to build on the gap areas of your
team. Make sure they're moving toward the skill set of your defined expert. However, don't
assume everyone will get there. A good rule of thumb is that you'll have the majority of your
team in the middle 60%, with 20% of them on either side of the novice-to-expert scale.
Q 3 Issues Related to Competency Model: Many of today’s organizations can be characterized as
distributed, matrix, and global, with functions that often operate autonomously in the absence of
governance. These factors make efficient and effective identification, utilization, and implementation of
competencies difficult. In fact, 69 percent of organizations surveyed said their competency management
was only somewhat, or not at all, effective. Interviews and focus groups with executives and other
business and HR leaders exposed these competency challenges prevalent in many organizations.

 Competency management is treated as an HR process, rather than a business imperative. On

average, 88 percent of organizations identified better leader and employee performance as
important or critical to the business. When asked about the single most important call to action
to improve performance, interviewees said, “Tell employees what is expected of them to excel.”
Performance excellence, then, means clear communication of the competencies for which an
employee is accountable.
 Alignment of competency development with business goals is weak. Some 61 percent of
organizations have only somewhat effectively, or not at all, identified critical talent segments
and key job roles. Hence, it goes without saying that most have yet to define critical job
responsibilities and success criteria. In the absence of these competency procedures, it is no
surprise that 72 percent of organizations indicate that employee and leader skill building is only
somewhat, or not at all, focused on developing competencies requisite for achieving business
goals.
 Investment in competency management is deprioritized. For the first time ever, an
organization’s people strategy supersedes the organization’s business strategy, in regard to its
importance in meeting business goals.
 Competency models are exclusive of technical competencies. Too often organizations exclude
technical skills from the functional portion of their competency model. Technical skills are
prevalent among many critical job roles including engineers, IT specialists, medical professionals,
and others. However, in many organizations, their competency models are, unfortunately, void
of technical competencies.
 Competencies are too often paper-based. In Brandon Hall Group’s 2015 State of Performance
Management Study, 30 percent of organizations said their primary tool for managing
performance is paper-based spreadsheets. Without an automated competency model,
leadership is challenged to accurately assess employee performance and focus on developing
strengths and closing skill gaps.