What is a behavioural interview?
A behavioural interview asks candidates to describe how they actually handled specific past situations ("tell me about a time when...") on the logic that past behaviour is the most reliable predictor of future behaviour. Answers are commonly organised with the STAR method: Situation, Task, Action, Result.
Why past behaviour is the signal
Hypothetical questions ("how would you handle a difficult stakeholder?") test a candidate's ability to describe good practice, which almost everyone can do. Behavioural questions test whether they have actually done it, with the friction, trade-offs and imperfect outcomes real situations contain. The specificity is the lie detector: people who have genuinely done the thing can supply the details; people who haven't produce generalities.
Running it well
Anchor each question to a capability the role genuinely needs, then interrogate the answer with STAR: what was the situation, what were you responsible for, what did *you* do (watch for "we" that dissolves into no personal action), and what happened, including what they would do differently. One deeply probed example beats five skimmed ones. And behavioural questions belong inside a structured interview, same questions, same rubric, or the comparability advantage evaporates.
Its limits, honestly
Behavioural interviews reward articulate self-presentation and long memories, under-serve candidates early in their careers with fewer stories to tell, and cover only the situations you think to ask about. That is why they work best as one instrument in a battery, alongside psychometric assessment for the stable underlying traits and work samples for the skill itself, rather than as the whole selection method.
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