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The use of Behavioural Descriptive Interviewing is increasingly popular but not wide spread in the 'built environment' industries. Even if you never come across it in your entire life mastery of how to answer them will put you at an advantage to your competitors and can be applied to any interview style.

BDI questioning is about examining your work habits and behaviours as these are likely to be repeated in a new setting.

If the interviewer utilises a BDI approach you will be asked questions like:

  • “Tell me about your most successful project, what did you do to make it happen?”

The interviewer is looking for a structured response that indicates your past behaviours would work favourably in the role they are looking to fill.

Situation: What was the project – give some back ground information on the features and problems encountered

Timeline: When did this take place – try and use recent examples

Action: Describe the action you took that was critical to the success of the project

Result: What was the outcome of your actions in the context of the project?

Referee: An optional addition but a nice touch is to give a contact that can corroborate what you have said.

Applying BDI to non BDI questions:

 

You can make a water tight response to any question by structuring your answer in this way.

Example:

Q: What makes you a good Manager?

A: I would say it is because I have good leadership skills.

S: My last employer had low staff retention and I was employed in part to rectify this.

T: I joined 12 months ago as an Interim Manager and left recently on completion of my contract.

A: I opened up what had been poor communication between departments and introduced targets and rewards to motivate staff.

R: A strong team dynamic was created whereby everyone was recognized for their part in the process and staff retention went from 75% to 95% within the 12 months of my tenure.

R: You can talk to any of the Executives of the company but Mr. Soandso is the most familiar with my management style.

It is a more compelling way of presenting yourself compared to making unsubstantiated assertions where the interviewer either believes you or doesn't.