Behavioral Interview

A behavioral interview is a structured hiring conversation built on the premise that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. Rather than asking hypothetical questions ("What would you do if...?"), interviewers ask candidates to recount specific situations they have actually navigated ("Tell me about a time when you had to negotiate under pressure").

The technique is widely attributed to industrial psychologist Tom Janz, whose 1986 book Behavior Description Interviewing helped popularize the method in corporate HR. It became a staple at consulting firms, the U.S. federal government, multilateral organizations, and major think tanks because structured behavioral questions produce more consistent, comparable, and legally defensible hiring decisions than unstructured chats.

Candidates are typically coached to answer using the STAR framework:

• Situation — the context
• Task — the responsibility or goal
• Action — what you specifically did
• Result — the measurable outcome

Variants include SOAR, CAR, and PAR. Interviewers often probe with follow-ups ("What was your role specifically?", "What would you do differently?") to test whether the story is genuine and to distinguish individual contribution from team credit.

For IR students, MUN delegates, and junior researchers, behavioral interviews are common at organizations such as the UN Secretariat, the World Bank, IMF, RAND, Brookings, Chatham House, and major consultancies. Typical competencies probed include teamwork across cultures, handling ambiguity, written analysis under deadline, stakeholder management, and ethical judgment. Some employers also use competency-based interviews, a closely related European variant that maps each question to a published competency framework — the European Commission's EPSO assessments and the UK Civil Service's Success Profiles are prominent examples.

Preparation usually involves drafting six to ten reusable STAR stories covering leadership, conflict, failure, initiative, and analytical work, then adapting them to whichever competency the question targets.