Compound Thinking

Interview Question Smackdown: “How Would You?” vs. “How Did You?”

Over on Johanna Rothman’s blog she mentions that she was doing some training and discovered that people were interviewing with hypothetical questions rather than behavior based questions.

Many folks were asking questions of the type, “How would you…” instead of “How did you” or “Tell me about a time you did…” We practiced a bit so they could feel the difference in question type.

But she doesn’t explain why she prefers the how did you to the how would you. So, I think it would be worthwhile to talk for a bit about the advantages of both types of question.

Hypothetical questions can give you an idea of the way a candidate might respond to a novel situation, one which they’ve never faced before. They can also help you to get a view into the way that the candidate works through a complex issue to uncover their right path.

For instance you might ask a candidate “If you began to suspect, without any concrete proof, that a co-worker was stealing from the company, what would you do?” “Right” answers to this question might include:

The way they answer naturally can tell you something about the way that person thinks about theft, about trust and interpersonal relationships at work, and about authority structures. Depending on how your department/company works various points of view on any of these issues can be an asset or liability. The trick with open ended questions is to find questions where the best performers in that job consistently answer differently than the worst — and to know what answers you are looking for ahead of time.

Behavior based questions on the other hand, can tell you a just as much by the way the person responds. For example, when you ask something like “Tell me about a time when you had to talk to a co-worker or family member about something which you knew would be emotionally charged, and how you handled that situation.” If the interviewee responds hypothetically, you can be almost certain that they probably haven’t had this kind of conversation recently. And if they think very hard before responding, you have some evidence that this is not something that just comes naturally to them. All of this is similar to hypothetical questions, but key difference is that the content of their answers is far more likely to reflect the way they actually act, since people usually think they are going to handle difficult conversations differently than they actually do in the heat of the moment.

So, while I think both types of question have value, and I generally think that behavior based questions are going to kick hypothetical questions ass in terms of giving you more insight more quickly. On the other hand, there are situations where people are looking to move into new areas of responsibility, and you have to rely on hypothetical questions. Just remember that you need to know how the best respond differently than the average (or the worst) ahead of time, a good interviewee can make wrong answers sound awfully good!