Ask Better, Hire Better: Behavioral Interviews That Work

Amanda Quinn 0:00
Morning, Milan.

Milan Batinich 0:01
Hey, good morning, Amanda.

Amanda Quinn 0:03
How are you doing today?

Milan Batinich 0:05
Good. It's early, so a little tired.

Amanda Quinn 0:07
Yeah, I appreciate you uh adjusting your schedule and being willing to meet and record this early. Thanks.

Milan Batinich 0:14
Yeah, I'm just glad we're recording it.

Amanda Quinn 0:15
Are you ready to get into it? Welcome to Build a Better BPO, the podcast where we help business process outsourcers break free from the one size fits all approach and build stronger, more profitable businesses.

Milan Batinich 0:31
If you're a BPO leader looking to improve margins, reduce employee churn, and create long-term client relationships, you're in the right place.

Amanda Quinn 0:39
I'm Amanda Quinn, principal at Quinn Growth Advisors. I help BPOs refine their positioning, market their expertise, and move beyond the outdated labor arbitrage model.

Milan Batinich 0:49
And I'm Milan Batinich, CEO of Milan Motivates. I help BPOs and CX leaders build stronger, happier teams by improving employee engagement and retention.

Amanda Quinn 0:59
Each episode will bring you insights, strategies, and real-world examples to help you stand out in the BPO space, attract better fit clients, and build a more sustainable business.

Milan Batinich 1:10
We're cutting through the noise with actionable takeaways. No fluff, no vague theories, just proven strategies from industry experts and BPO leaders who are making it happen.

Amanda Quinn 1:20
So if you're ready to build a better BPO, let's dive in. Milan, what are behavioral interviews? Why are they important? Why is this topic something that you wanted to bring to everyone's attention?

Milan Batinich 1:53
Yeah, so biggest reason why I wanted to bring it to everyone's attention, you know, a couple of podcasts ago we talked about uh recruiting and um how to do that, how to place job ads. But I think the next step in the candidate journey as a person's uh hired and onboarded, the way somebody's interviewed is really important to be able to curb and reduce employee attrition. For most BPOs, for most contact centers as a whole, their annual attrition, 90% of it typically will occur in the first three months. So think about once a candidate gets hired, they go through training and then they have a nesting period. And usually during training or the nesting period, or even before they even start training, is when they start to fall off when they leave the organization. So you really want to be able to set a firm foundation through your interviewing process to make sure, number one, is my company a good fit for this candidate? And then number two, is this candidate going to be a good fit for the types of calls or the types of interactions they're going to handle? So the way you can learn that best is through conducting behavioral interviews versus the old standard of interviewing.

Amanda Quinn 3:01
And what is the old standard of interviewing, just to be clear?

Milan Batinich 3:04
Yeah, yeah. So old stand well, I call it the old standard. I know a lot of organizations still utilize it. But you know, it's like, say, I'm interviewing you, Amanda, and I say, Amanda, tell me your top three strengths. Okay, you're reliable, you're a hard worker, you get stuff done. Okay, great. Okay, now tell me your top two weaknesses. I'm a perfectionist. It's like, okay, stop. Like, stop. What are you really learning from the candidate when you're asking those types of questions? It's not situation-based, you don't get a real good understanding on what the candidate can handle, how they'll overcome customer objections, how they'll be on the phone, or if it's chat or email. So it's it's really vague. And as an interviewer, people probably notice that they receive similar types of answers from each candidate. I can't tell you over the years how many times. Biggest weakness, I heard perfectionists probably 80% of the time. I'm like, wow, there's so many perfectionists out there. I've interviewed thousands of candidates, and how is it that like over 80% are all perfectionists? That's okay.

Amanda Quinn 4:06
So it sounds like a lot of firms fall into the trap of relying on these kind of surface level questions. My guess is probably because they're easy to prepare for. Is that right? Is that what you've kind of observed and have experienced yourself?

Milan Batinich 4:19
Yeah, because it it's a canned uh interview questionnaire. So, you know, I've worked for companies where they hand you, as a hiring manager, they hand me a piece of paper and it has a list of, say, 10 or 12 different questions. And it's like, all right, here's the 10 or 12 questions that you ask every single candidate. And sometimes it's because they're like, oh, we don't want uh bias to come in. But you can still have a canned interview or already preset questions, but it really needs to be based on human behaviors or the candidates' behaviors and how they would respond to situations versus strengths and weaknesses and those types of really vague questions. And then with a behavioral interview, too, one of the other perks is it becomes conversational. And if you're running a contact center, you want to see how the candidate interacts within a conversation versus QA because a lot of the conversations that they're gonna have with your customers isn't gonna be QA. It's gonna be conversational and problem solving.

Amanda Quinn 5:14
That's a really good point I hadn't thought of before. Beyond just the kind of the data that you're extracting from these questions that you're asking, being able to test how good these people are at just being human, which is what you're hiring them to do. This is kind of a real live assessment of that and being able to see that in real life. Are they quick on their toes? How are they are they nimble? Are what are they doing? Are they bobbing when they should be weaving? You know, that kind of thing.

Milan Batinich 5:42
Yeah, yeah. And if they're just answering these standard questions where it's just QA, and then you move on to the next question, you don't really get a sense or an idea of how they would be on the phone with your customer and how they'd be able to problem solve and think on their feet. And like you said, uh, you know, are they bobbing when they should be weaving?

Amanda Quinn 5:57
Okay, so let's dive into it. What are behavioral interview questions? Can you break it down for us?

Milan Batinich 6:02
Yeah, so there's a couple different methods of behavioral interviewing. My favorite method is the SOAR method. S-O-A-R. How did I make sure I spelled SOAR correctly? So the SOAR method, it really looks at four aspects of the way somebody will behave. Not only are you looking for behavioral alignments, okay, if this job requires somebody that has specific types of behaviors or specific types of ways they communicate with the customers, you know, you'll be able to pick up on that during a behavioral interview through that conversation. And then there's also behavioral misalignment. So you want to see can this person adapt or adjust? Can they modify themselves, even though they're not maybe perfectly aligned to the role? Can they modify their behaviors to be able to fit the role? Like I mentioned, my favorite method is the SOAR method. So, first thing you want to ask is about a situation. So, really set me up with what was the situation, what did what was the problem you needed to solve? And then the second piece is the obstacle. What was the obstacle that you were uh trying to overcome based on the situation that the customer gave you? A third step is okay, you identified the situation, you identified the obstacle you needed to overcome. Now, what actions did you take in order to overcome that obstacle to solve that situation? Kind of all funnels back up to that situation. And then the R is results. So what was that end result? So say you had an angry customer, they were angry, I don't know, for whatever reason. So the situation is oh, I had this angry customer call me. They were mad because uh maybe a product broke and it was outside of their warranty. So they were the situation was they were upset. So obstacle is it's outside of warranty. You know, what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to help them? I can't just like give them a free replacement because their product is outside of warranty. So then, okay, what actions were you able to take? You know, were you able to look into your knowledge management system, different resources? You know, were you able to find out from your supervisor? Yeah, we can't replace the product, but is there an alternative or is there a plan B? Is there something else that we can do for this customer to be able to ease them, de-escalate them, and help them? And then what are those actions that you took? And then what was the final result? And you know, a lot of times when I do behavioral interviews, I'll ask about using that SOAR method, I'll ask about where they were successful, and then I really want an example where they were unsuccessful to see their problem solving skills. Like were they able to take the appropriate actions, even though it didn't end up being the result they were hoping for, or their customer was hoping for, were they able to take the right actions? And by really understanding how somebody reacts to situations and if they take initiative and if they're proactive, it'll really be able to tell you based on their answers are they going to be a good long-term fit for your customers, for your contact center, or are they gonna be the type of person that, you know, for first angry customer they get, they're just gonna be like, I quit, I'm over this, I'm done. Um, and you'll also be able to tell, like, can they handle complex, you know, training? It's it's cr amazing how many times people just quit during training because they're like inundated with so much information.

Amanda Quinn 9:21
Okay. So I want to back up for a second to make it more tangible for the everyone in the audience, everyone that's listening. So what would I I can understand how as a respondent you would want to respond in this SOAR method, kind of like the STAR method I remember for putting together a resume. How would you actually ask the question? Like, can you give us an example of what the question would be and how would you pull out those nuggets along the way to get at the obstacle to get at the action?

Milan Batinich 9:50
Yeah, and before I go into that, so STAR is another method of behavioral interviewing. However, SOAR focuses more on the obstacle. So that's the main main difference between task and obstacle. So the way I would ask is, you know, uh, say I'm interviewing you, Amanda. Amanda, tell me about a time when you had an angry customer. And why were they angry? So then you're you're laying out the situation for me. And you know, and sometimes the person will answer the obstacle right in there. You may say, Well, they were upset because their product was outside of warranty, and I wasn't able to send them a new product. Okay, so there's the obstacle. I wasn't able to send them a new product. Sometimes people will be very transactional when they answer, and they'll say, Oh, I had an angry customer because their product was outside of warranty. Okay, so what was the obstacle or what was the roadblock? Um, what was the hurdle that you had to overcome, Amanda, with that customer? Well, I wasn't allowed to send them a new product because it was outside of warranty, so that's that was a big hurdle for me. Okay, so what actions did you take? What did you do in order to be able to help them uh solve their problem of the product being outside of warranty? So then you're asking them to give the actions. Yeah, you don't actually use the words like, tell me what actions you took. You know, I mean you could, but you just want to ask in general, you know, what what did you do? What were you able to do? And then what ended up happening with that customer? You know, what was the end result? So really you're just asking those simple questions. And like I said, sometimes within one question, candidates will answer multiple pieces of it, especially if they've been through a lot of uh interviews or behavioral interviews in the past, they may know kind of where the interview question is going. So yeah, so then you're really able to assess, you know, how they were able to handle it. And it tells you a lot of things about a candidate. It tells you, okay, can they show empathy? You know, based on how they're explaining to you how they reacted to the customer. You know, if they say, Oh, the customer's product was out of the side of warranty, I didn't know what I could do, so I told them I couldn't do anything. It's like, well, wrong answer.

Amanda Quinn 11:55
Yeah, that's a good point. As an interviewer, do you have like a checklist of things that you're you know, mentally or physically in front of you that you're kind of looking for, looking to see from a prospective agent that you're interviewing?

Milan Batinich 12:08
Yeah, so more for me, more mental, but you can definitely write it out. So, really, I'm looking for their problem solving skills, uh, their people skills, communication skills within their answer. Are they able to show empathy? You know, how you can really sense from somebody how they felt from that situation. You know, did they empathize with the person? Like, you know, if I'm interviewing somebody and they're like, man, Milan, I really wish I could have helped them. You know, I even tried this, I tried this, I, you know, I called my supervisor, I called this person, I looked in our knowledge software, I did all these different things. It really shows, like, okay, this person is willing to go above and beyond, versus I told them it was outside of warranty, so nothing I could do. Bye. You know, so it really shows you uh so many of those things on without the candidate really realizing how much they're showing you.

Amanda Quinn 12:56
What would be some red flags? I I think you just pointed one out, like if they don't do much in the way of trying to solve the problem beyond kind of the surface level, what else would you say would be a red flag if you were interviewing somebody?

Milan Batinich 13:10
I would say if they use a vague situation. So I always try to ask them for a specific example of a time they had an angry customer call or an angry customer walk into their restaurant or their store. Because a lot of times people will just use a made-up vague, well, you know, or uh or they'll say, Well, this is how I would handle it. Now, if they have no experience, I completely understand. But if they have experience in some type of customer facing or customer service role, then you really want to a red flag for me would be that vague answer.

Amanda Quinn 13:43
I always empathize because with others because I have the memory of a goldfish, especially when it comes to my own life. So you even just asking, I was gonna try to play the opposite side of you're interviewing me. And the minute you asked the first question and dealing with a uh difficult client or difficult customer, I was like, I got nothing. I can't remember something.

Milan Batinich 14:03
So tell me about a time Tell me about a Amanda, tell me about a time you needed to deal with a difficult podcast co-host.

Amanda Quinn 14:10
Yeah, there you go. Maybe you have to make it very, very specific to help jog some memories for uh for some and recent, right? Yeah, exactly.

Milan Batinich 14:19
And you know, other um other things you you want to try to identify as an interviewer, as a hiring manager that's interviewing candidates, you know, understanding teamwork. So you can also identify how did the person interact with other team members, you know. So you got the problem solving, communication, empathy, you know, did they bring in other team members to help them solve the problem or how did they utilize their team? And then also with the end results, conflict resolution. So how are they resolving that conflict with that with with that customer? You know, I think back to like when I worked for American Express, everybody calling up was angry, usually about Amex's annual fee, but everybody was angry.

Amanda Quinn 14:58
So it's Yeah, I hate that hate that thing. I know, me too.

Milan Batinich 15:01
Me too. Yep. But it's uh it's a necessary evil.

Amanda Quinn 15:06
Gotta get to the lounges, right? Gotta get to the yeah, gotta get to the So Milan, what would a behavioral interview look like? Let's talk about how it could be different for a frontline agent versus a team leader or a supervisor. Can you give me some examples of like how you would change your interview questions or your approach depending on the level of seniority of who you're interviewing?

Milan Batinich 15:27
Yeah, yeah. So the biggest uh adjustments that I would uh utilize is anybody that's say interviewing for a supervisor or tier one who's interviewing for a team lead position. I would gear the questions more towards being able to assess their leadership ability. So asking the same types of questions, you know, maybe but maybe gear it towards employees. Like, hey, Amanda, say you're a supervisor interviewing for a different type of supervisory role or a management role. You know, Amanda, tell me about a time maybe when you needed to assist a difficult employee, or how did you coach up? One of my favorite ones is tell me about a situation or a time when you needed to coach up um an underperforming agent. By far one of my favorites. Because then it really tells you everything you need to know. That one question. You know, and then you can still go through, figure out the obstacle, what actions did you take, what was the end result? But really shows okay, are you an efficient coach of other human beings? Can you can you help an underperformer really be able to gain traction, become a better agent? I think back with one of the BPOs I worked for, I was in sales, but we had one specific supervisor that all the underperformers were were put on her team because she was easily the best coach we had on the operation side of the business. So anybody that was an underperformer went on her team.

Amanda Quinn 16:47
How was that for her? Yeah, I was just about to answer that.

Milan Batinich 16:51
So it's it was tough for her, especially when you do employee engagement surveys, and then we're always like, Why does she have the lowest employee engagements of all the supervisors? It's like, well, all of the people on her team have been written up by their former supervisors, that's why they're probably disengaged. So she was kind of like that last push. Like, okay, this person's been given a verbal warning or they've been put on an improvement plan, or they've been written up, or whatever the case may be. But instead of, you know, releasing them, let's move them to this person. And for the most part, she was able to turn them around. So she probably has a lot of great examples of how she coached up. But to answer your initial question around different types of questions for say supervisors or people in leadership, I think uh you ask those situation type questions, those behavioral questions around how they do help customers, because typically those supervisors are the ones answering escalated questions. So if I'm a agent and I need to escalate a call because they've asked to speak with a supervisor or manager, so they need to be able to answer those questions, you know, those behavioral interview questions, how they helped an angry customer. But then also I would add in questions around, okay, now tell me about times you've helped an underperforming agent or difficult agent, you know, and how did you get that agent to become a higher performer? So I think those uh leadership type roles become more employee-driven uh behavioral questions versus customer-driven.

Amanda Quinn 18:21
Yeah, that makes sense. And so just to put a bow on this kind of section, so some of the themes that you said you look for when you interview applicants from a behavioral perspective are their problem-solving skills, their ability to communicate and how good their communication skills are, obviously their people skills and whether they can talk angry customers or angry teammates down off the ledge empathy, whether they have empathy, and if they're a good teammate, looking for kind of some of those overall willingness to kind of pitch into the team. And then on the manager side, you're also looking for uh some leadership, looking for ability and history, being able to coach up and mentor and lead people to perform better. Is that right? Anything else you would add?

Milan Batinich 19:07
Yeah, no, absolutely. And I would say with any behavioral interview question, just make sure it's open-ended questions. You don't want people to be put into a corner of just answering yes, no. But no, I think the way you summarize it is is exactly right. And you're gonna gain so much more information versus tell me your greatest strength, tell me your greatest weakness. You know, one fun behavioral interview question I've asked for the last, I don't know, 15 years that has nothing to do with customers or that really the job, but it does in identifying those different aspects that you just mentioned. Well, there's two variations. One is you're a superhero, what's your superpower? You get one superpower, what would you choose and why? And then the other one, and I can explain why. Um I asked that. Uh, but the other one is you know, you're on a deserted island. I think of the show Lost. You're on a deserted island and you can bring three friends with you. Somehow you magically can choose the three friends you want with you on the deserted island. Because then it tells you too, like, what their focus is and their problem solving.

Amanda Quinn 20:02
Oh, I want to answer these.

Milan Batinich 20:03
Yeah, okay. So you can have one superpower. What would it be and why, Amanda?

Amanda Quinn 20:08
If I could have one superpower. Uh I mean, ability to time travel would be pretty cool. Ability to move through space and time, ability to control things with my mind would be pretty good for my general laziness.

Milan Batinich 20:24
Now remember that with if you choose teleportation, then you don't get your airline miles.

Amanda Quinn 20:28
That's totally fine with me. You don't need them if you can teleport. I might like that, because then I could just be I could be a citizen of the world. I think I might do teleportation. Okay. I want I want to like experience every part of the world. I want to meet tons of people. I want to travel without the jet lag. That sounds great.

Milan Batinich 20:48
Yep. Yep. That's good.

Amanda Quinn 20:51
What is that? What did you learn about me?

Milan Batinich 20:55
Well, it's a smart answer, because that's my answer too. So I'd like to think my answer is smart.

Amanda Quinn 21:00
Funny. That's so funny.

Milan Batinich 21:01
Mine for the longest time was to fly, because I think that would be awesome. But then I'm like, there's so many like physics issues when you fly. You know, and things I can run into. I don't know if it told me anything specific about you, but except that you're efficient. Like you want to get you want to meet as many people as possible and as quickly as possible without suffering from jet lag. What that tells me is that you want to you're an efficient human being. You're an efficient employee because you want to get things done the most efficient way possible, versus going to the airport, waiting, getting delayed, and encountering turbulence. Like, like could you imagine just poof, one minute later you're in Vegas? Or poof, one minute later you're in South Africa or Sydney. And I don't know why one one minute, if you're gonna teleport, it should happen in like instantly.

Amanda Quinn 21:44
Instantly. Instantly. Yeah, instantly. Cool. Okay, that makes sense.

Milan Batinich 21:47
Um what about Desert Island? Are you gonna answer that one?

Amanda Quinn 21:50
Desert I mean Desert Island, I would be practical. I think Desert Island, I would I need sunscreen because I'm pale AF. Um I I would probably want like a water, something to turn seawater into drinkable water. So some sort of water filtration thing. I mean, I wouldn't I would not survive long on a desert island. So I probably shouldn't do something like just enjoy my last days and have like a book or something. But I think I will I'll say for I would probably actually do something to help catch animal like catch food, fish or whatever. Albeit I probably won't know how to cook it or eat it. You know, I probably won't.

Milan Batinich 22:29
You've run you running. You've run out of things to be able to cook it. So yeah, you're right.

Milan Batinich 22:35
You just eating sushi all the time.

Amanda Quinn 22:36
Oh, I guess, yeah, yeah, I guess that's right. I think probably fire. I probably need fire. Yeah, that's right. So let's just say, Milan, uh, for the skeptics out there that are saying, this all sounds great, but introducing behavioral interviews is going to add too much variability in interviews between candidates and how do we score them? What would you say to that?

Milan Batinich 23:02
So I would say develop and maybe work with human resources to develop a rubric because you're still asking the same questions, but the way they're going to be answered is different. So still developing a rubric where you can evaluate and score each interview based on everything you mentioned a little while ago. So the problem solving, communication, teamwork, leadership, empathy, all of those things that the interview, interview hiring manager is picking up on. And I would also, uh, there's plenty of tools and resources out there where you can easily find a YouTube video or ask AI, Chat GPT, you know, how do I score? Or how do I identify these characteristics within people? I know it's different for me because of the thousands of people I've interviewed over the years, but for a hiring manager that may not be interviewing as many candidates or have as much interviewing experience, you know, developing some type of rubric that really identifies those behavioral anchors and then scoring it, learning how to score it. I think it's probably the most difficult part. But you're gonna gain so much more insights. And the inner it doesn't make the interviews longer, it's still the same length. You're just not asking those basic questions anymore of strengths and weaknesses.

Amanda Quinn 24:07
Yeah, that makes sense. And for those that are listening that want to take this and apply it to their business, want to overhaul how they how they approach interviewing, what their interview process is like, where would you recommend they start?

Milan Batinich 24:22
Ooh, that's a great question. I would start with the SOAR method. So research the SOAR method, you know, learn it. It's really simple. Okay. Situation, obstacle, action, results. Yep, that those those four, yeah. And it's this is all gonna lead to faster hiring decisions. It's gonna reduce employee attrition because you know exactly what you're getting into, and the employee understands exactly what they're getting into through this conversation, through this type of interview process. So it's not adding more time. If anything, it's saving you time. Because you could be able to weed out candidates uh quicker based on the way they answer in the SOAR method. So I would say just look up the SOAR method, learn it, super simplistic. And you know, of course, every company is still gonna have those standard interview questions that you need to ask. But outside of that, I would replace a lot of the fluff, a lot of the other types of questions where you don't really learn much about the candidate with the behavioral interviewing.

Amanda Quinn 25:17
Anything else that you would add as we kind of wrap it up here? Um, for those that have additional questions, like how can they get in touch with you if they need guidance implementing this with their company or want um some insight into how they can improve their interview process? How can firms reach out to you?

Milan Batinich 25:35
Yeah. So uh LinkedIn or they can shoot me an email. So it's really simple. Milan A N at Milan MotivatesTech.

Amanda Quinn 25:42
Thanks, Milan. Appreciate all this great tips.

Milan Batinich 25:44
Yeah, this has been great.