Biographical interviews are a different approach to Behavioral Interviews. The Biographical Interview works on studying the applicant's record for information about their skills, qualifications, and experience.
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Biographical Interviews are quite common in the professional and academic spheres, where these elements are very relevant to employers in those fields.
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Differences between Behavioral Interviews and Biographical Interviews.
Biographical Interview is based on the individual. Unlike the Behavioral interview, the questions are tailored to the information contained in the Curriculum Vitae (CV) and are generated by matching the CV to the job.
The Biographical Interview therefore contains a lot of subjective information and questions. Your prior experience in a particular position, for example, will be seen as relevant to the new job.
Biographical Interviews explore documented experience, qualifications, and other criteria systematically. These can be very thorough interviews.
For people used to Behavioral interviews:
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The non standard questions in a Biographical interview are quite different, because they're geared to each applicant as an individual. This can take a bit of getting used to, and you're advised to make sure you remember all the information you provide to the interviewers. Check your CV and refresh your memory prior to the interview.
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For example:
The job a librarian. Your CV contains information regarding your previous experience in this field, and your skill levels. Librarians are required to have formal qualifications in the field.
The Behavioral interview will therefore:
- Examine your previous job to establish proven levels of proficiency.
- Examine your qualifications to confirm necessary standards.
- Explore your former duties to get an idea of your knowledge base, experience, what sort of volumes of library work you were handling, etc.
- Ask technical questions to check your working knowledge of procedures.
As you can see, this is very detailed examination. Your answers are basically proving your CV qualifications, and the interviewers are checking your knowledge and experience.
Hybrid interviews
Because of the changing nature of the workplace, employment laws, and other common areas of employer obligations, there are some elements of Behavioral interviews which are relevant in Biographical interviews.
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Job criteria, and in some cases contract conditions, can also add some Behavioral interview questions to an interview which is mainly Biographical.
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This is the Hybrid interview, and the inclusion of the Behavioral elements can be unfamiliar to those used to Biographical interviews.
The most likely Behavioral elements in a Hybrid interview are:
Workplace relationships May be relevant to particular roles.
OHS requirements Common in some professions.
Teamwork questions Often related to project or contract environments, etc.
Questions created by job criteria Usually occur where Biographical information doesn't apply.
