Interview Like a Pro: Behavioral Interview Techniques for Hiring Managers

Unlock the power of behavioral interviewing to make more confident hiring decisions. In this episode, we’ll show you the right questions to ask, key insights to listen for, and how to turn those answers into smart, actionable next steps.

Summary

In this episode of Advancing Talent Acquisition, our host Jenna Hinrichsen is joined by Katie Leonard, former Executive Director and Head of Talent Acquisition at Karuna Therapeutics. With more than 20 years of experience in biotech and pharma, Katie brings valuable perspective on the role behavioral interviewing plays in hiring success. Together, they explore how the STAR method can help uncover candidate potential, the importance of preparation for both interviewers and candidates, and key indicators to watch for throughout the process. If you’re looking to build stronger, more effective interview practices, this episode is full of insights you can put into action.

Episode 7

Jenna Hinrichsen  
Welcome to the Advanced RPO Podcast, Advancing Talent Acquisition. Our guest today is Katie Leonard. Welcome, Katie. Will you tell us a little bit about your background? 

Katie Leonard 
Absolutely. Hi Jenna. Thanks for having me. Let’s see. I was most recently the executive director and head of talent acquisition a little tiny biotech back in 2020 called Karuna Therapeutics. We worked in neuropsych on indications, primarily the leading indication was in schizophrenia and Karuna over the past four years grew from 40 people, which is when I started with the organization as the head of TA, through to 350 people. And as that indication and drug advanced closer to commercial launch and FDA approval, we were bought by Bristol-Meyer Squibb for $14 billion. So for the last year, I was retained at Bristol-Meyer Squibb to oversee and collaborate with their team on the commercial sales launch of what is now known as CoBentB. So that’s my most recent experience, but I have over 20 years in biotech pharma recruiting up through executive level in other industries as well, such as the legal industry and a little bit in nonprofit and membership associations. 

Jenna Hinrichsen  
Okay, awesome. Well, I’m excited to have you as a guest on the podcast today and I’m excited for our topic. Our topic today is behavioral interviewing. And I just wanted to preface that with, I know this is not something that is new, but I think it gets a lot of, there’s a lot of misunderstanding, I guess I should say, around behavioral interviewing. I think it has become a buzzword where people use the word, but I wonder sometimes how much people really understand what it means and how you can use it to optimize your interviewing process. So based on your background, I think you are such a great guest to talk to us about this and help us really bottom line what is most important when it comes to behavioral interviewing. So for the first question, I just want to get a baseline understanding what is behavioral interviewing and how is it different from traditional interviewing. 

Katie Leonard
So, I love this topic because I truly, truly believe in behavioral conversational and situational interviewing techniques when building out the best talent for any company. We implemented this at Karuna Therapeutics. I even did behavioral interviewing workshops with my TA team. I was the first and then I grew a team of about seven over the course of those four years. So behavioral interviewing, the focus is centered around past behavior, evidence-based question and answer. So something like, tell me about a time when, fill in the blank versus the traditional Q and A, write off a resume and skillset might be something like, what are your strengths or what are your weaknesses? And that’s fine. It’s okay to ask some of those questions, I suppose, but when you’re having a conversation and asking about past behaviors, you’re gaining evidence-based answers, which as we know, evidence of, future performance. So it also relaxes people, I think, to have more of a conversation about somebody’s background versus these black and white Q and A’s. You tend to get candidates answering these questions how they think you want them to be answered. So with a conversation and a behavior-based question, you get to dig into the mind of the person you’re speaking to, some of their past behaviors, and it gets more to the core of the talent that you’re speaking to, 

Jenna Hinrichsen  
I love that you said it’s more conversational and it really lets the candidate put their guard down. I think interviews can be so structured and to your point, it becomes very almost robotic. Like you’re answering the question the way the person you think the person wants you to answer it or someone’s coached you on how to answer it. And I think it is more comfortable for someone to talk about their background. It’s more about them. It feels more authentic. And I think even as the interviewer being able to chime in and be part of that conversation, it helps relax the whole situation, which means then you’re going to get more out of that. You’re going to learn more about the candidate even without them knowing, right? Like you kind of go into situations where they’re talking about something, giving you an example, and you’re able to pull out a lot of information about the person just on the way they answered that question. So I love that overview of it and how you can kind of break apart the difference between behavioral and traditional interviewing.  
What are some key elements, would you say, of a well-structured behavioral interviewing question? So a lot of times I think we have the questions and we’re doing behavioral interviewing, but what would make a well-structured question if you’re choosing to do behavioral interviewing? 

Katie Leonard  
I was actually going to go right into that based upon your comment to my answer. Even though it’s conversational and it’s a more relaxed vibe between interviewer and candidate and therefore more critical information can be reaped and pulled out of the conversation, There is, and I taught this in our workshops, there is a structure to it. So I don’t want hiring managers, especially not talent acquisition people that do this all day every day. They’re interviewing every day. Hiring managers aren’t necessarily. So we taught them a structure to this. They’re not going in going, well, I don’t want to just have a chat with the candidate. I need to get to the core, right? So you can kind of align the core questions that you might have for the candidate. What they call the star technique is something I like to teach the situation, task, action, and result. 
So, instead of asking somebody about their regulatory affairs experience relevant to, you know, an NDA or something like that, they might structure that particular question based upon a situation having to do with NDA work at their last job or a few jobs ago. So they might be looking at the resume ahead of an interview and say, okay, I’m to give them a situation and the task at hand. want to know how they act and how it resulted. So that’s star. So that’s a well structured behavioral interview question.  
So you might ask something like, tell me about the time you were working on the NDA for blank indication. And this situation, know, came up performing the NDA where your timeline was pushed back. How did you react to that? What did you do with your team? How did you deliver this information to such and such executives or direct managers? And what was the result? So you’re not just asking, hey, have you ever worked on an NDA? Of course, I can’t say yes. Yes, I was critical on that. So instead, you’re asking about the situation and more importantly, their actions amongst that environment situation, their behavior and the result of it. You get a lot more info about them that way. 

Jenna Hinrichsen  
You bring up a really good point here that I want to talk about for a minute is that managers, hiring managers, recruiters, whoever it is that’s doing the interviewing process really needs to prep for an interview. And I think a lot of times we get crazy busy in our work days and we’re just jumping from one task to another. And when you’ve done a hundred interviews, it’s like, you know the questions you’re going to ask. You’ve got it kind of planned out, but you really haven’t reviewed the resume. You’re going to do that when you’re on the phone with the person or when you’re on Zoom with the person. And the problem with that is you haven’t had time to really craft those questions to best fit what you’re looking for in a response, but also tailor it to that particular candidate’s background. And so that a lot of times I think becomes the disconnect where a manager or recruiter is rushing through an interview to get through the questions. They’re looking, as you said, for those core things they want to get right to them, but they haven’t reviewed the background of the person. And so it’s almost becomes like two passing ships in the night. They’re not aligned on that. And so just like candidates have to take time and prepare for an interview, think hiring managers or recruiters often forget they also need to do that before each interview. 

Katie Leonard  
Absolutely. I mean, I believe talent acquisition teams are here to make this process seamless and easy for the company, all the people. time is money. So I mean, I personally implemented with my team behavioral based interview questions in four categories that we put into our applicant tracking system. So when a hiring manager would get that invitation to enter or a panel member say wasn’t the hiring manager, they would have behavioral based interview question examples at their fingertips, depending on which of the four categories this candidate would fall into. Are they going to be their future manager potentially? Are they going to be a peer? Are they going to report to them? Or is this an executive level position for the company? And we devised these lists of situational questions or just phraseology so that they knew to grab the CV in prep at least a half hour, if not more, before the interview, you know, get comfortable with that candidate’s background, remind themselves of their background. And then, you know, last minute they can go in there and kind of go, I like that one. I’m going to ask about this. And it’s going to pertain to their function or what’s most important to them about this person being hired, related to their function, but they don’t have to start from scratch. So I like to make things easier for my hiring managers and hiring teams. So we did that over the course of time, but absolutely so many people go in blinded or blindfolded, I should say, and a candidate can tell that. And don’t forget, an interview is a two-way street. A candidate is also interviewing you to see how interested are they in working around you, for you, with you, for this company? How excited is this person about the company? Or what is their history with the company? And really at the end of the day, how can I make this person’s job better and easier and more successful if I take this job? So you preparing to interview somebody is beneficial for all parties. 

Jenna Hinrichsen  
I completely agree. And I think giving them some question options is great because if you give them an exact interview question, which we know there’s multiple ways you can ask a question. It puts them back in or gives them a crutch to kind of be back in that robotic phase where they just are going to go down the list. so giving them options so they know which questions are going to get them the responses or the information they’re looking for is great, but they have to stop and look at what question specifically within this category am I going to ask the candidates? It gives them some help, but it also forces them to really get engaged in that conversation. So I love that too. What are some red flags that hiring managers should watch out for a behavioral interview? So when a candidate is answering those questions, you know, we’re moving on, we’re capturing information, we’re moving on to the next question, but what should stop a hiring manager and say, okay, I got to make a note of this, or I need to ask a secondary question to dig a little bit deeper on this? 

Katie Leonard  
Yes, and actually this is why I love this technique because you should be taking notes on some of these, whether they’re pink or red flags in the conversation, because sometimes it’s not a deal breaker answer, but it’s something that comes to the surface that that person might go, hmm. And it might not even be the most senior person that’s on the panel interviewing this candidate. There might be five people back to back half hour, something like that, and the most junior person notices something in a Q and A in a behavioral situational question that causes pause. And it’s great to take those notes. And that’s why believe in keeping the interview commentary and scorecards confidential to a degree. There are exceptions to this, but I do believe they should be kept confidential in the sense of, there’s no bias, you know, an unconscious bias that we talk about in interview processes. So you don’t know who it’s necessarily coming from, but somebody caught something, you know, so it’s very helpful for a hiring team. But red flag number one would be when you ask somebody a behavioral situational question, calling for detail, if they stumble and can’t think of any details relevant to that question, it might mean that it might, I’m just saying not always – they may have lied on their resume. Maybe they didn’t do that thing. Because how do you not recall that if you did it, right? Or they could just be nervous. That’s why I always say there’s exceptions. Take notes and let other people kind of weigh in and or the next round. You know, if that information is shared, another person in the interview panel could revisit that with the person. Something that would be more of pink flags, I don’t know. I think pink flags are just prod further and ask more later, but I red flags are like when they can’t recall details. It happens more often than you think. If you just ask somebody, what are your strengths or do you have this experience? They want the job, they might lie. I’m not saying everybody does, but they might. They may have exaggerated their resume to get their foot through the door. And when you ask the details of it and they can’t recall them, that’s a red flag. 

Jenna Hinrichsen 
Well, and it’s more easy than ever to do that because of AI. So I mean, can even have to hire someone to do, to write your resume or give you examples. You can literally just go in and have AI do it for you. So I think that makes a lot of sense and that’s a great point. And I do agree that sometimes they’ll stumble on something where they need a minute to think about it because they’re not prepared ahead of time. They shouldn’t be prepared ahead of time with the questions. And so sometimes it can come down to they’re nervous and they feel on the spot and they can’t think of something. So it’s important for a hiring manager or recruiter to be able to differentiate between is this person really not knowing what this is and is this a flag or is this person nervous so they can adjust the interview accordingly? Like, do you need a minute? And it’s totally fine if you do, know, take a deep breath, think about things for a second and then let’s revisit the question or is it, do I need to ask more questions because it appears that this person may be exaggerating this particular skill. 

Katie Leonard  
Absolutely. But also on the candidate side, quick tip because it does happen. Listen, we’re all human. You can get nervous. You can space out. You may have been in a job. I listen, I recruited to offer to hire 40 people up to 350 people while building and leading a function for a, you know, groundbreaking neuropsych indication in three to four years. It was a lot of work. So I could be asked something in an interview where I go, you know, I stumbled because there was so much going on at that point in time.  
And let’s say after the interview, you’re writing your thank you letter to that person, which you should always do. Don’t always expect a response, but weave that in, make it personal. Hey, you know, well, don’t say, hey, but as you’re thanking the person, you know, sort of mentioned, by the way, I thought about your question about dot dot dot, and it dawned on me. And then tell them a little bit about what you forgot in the interview. Just do a little follow-up. You can kind of save it, I think. That way it goes a really long way. 

Jenna Hinrichsen  
Yeah, I completely agree. Okay, what are your thoughts on behavioral assessments and how they fit into the interview process? There’s a lot of tools out there now that companies can use. You can create your own internally. You can partner with a vendor externally and run those. What are your thoughts on them and how do you see them fitting into the process? 

Katie Leonard  
Okay, well, I kind of have a strong opinion on this one. And my background here is this, I studied industrial organizational psychology and clinical psychology in college. And then I’ve worked, like I said, for biotech and pharma, including in a variety of CNS and neuropsych companies, but also I recruited for an organization for a few years that actually develops exams, therefore certifications. And I had to hire a few experts. There’s like only a couple handfuls of these people in the world, believe it or not, that wrote these exams and wrote these assessments and how are they measured. It’s a whole science, right? So I’ve developed this theory over time that I don’t believe in them in the interview process. And this is why: the conversational behavioral interviewing technique, it should be a series of conversations in the interviews. It’s not one and done, right? So I don’t believe that as human beings, we should have a test, if you will, on behaviors that filters you out for a job. Now, could it be something helpful in the assessment? You can get me a little bit leaning there to a yes. 
I really love them for current employees. I think the beauty of building companies out by love, love, love, HR and talent acquisition is, you know, we’re a diverse tapestry of people and each team and function is another tapestry of people, individuality and unique, uniqueness and diversity. So if you assess your team, through behavioral assessment testing. And you find this one shines here or could use improvement. This is a weakness of theirs or makes them nervous or whatever it is. You might even find they might need training here or here. And then you start understanding your team and even sharing that amongst the team so that your team can work as a well-oiled machine of diversity and individuality. I think that’s the beauty of us as human beings. I don’t believe in it as a filter for interviewing for an opportunity. What do you think? 

Jenna Hinrichsen
I have a strong opinion too and I agree. I am aligned with you a hundred percent. I’m so glad to hear that you feel that way about it, especially with your background and your expertise in this area, because I do think, and I’ve worked at companies where you have every candidate do it in the interview process or I’ve done it in the interview process. And I do think there is a place for them, but I’m in the same boat as you where I think they’re better after someone has started. So from a hiring perspective, if, a company or hiring manager is going to use it as part of the process, my recommendation is always, it should be after you’ve hired the person and during the onboarding or to your point, once the person is an employee and you can really learn how that can impact their relationships internally, how you can better manage and coach them, what areas you should be aware of. But I think having them in the beginning of an interview process, which is where they sort of landed, I think, since they came out, they became a popular tool, obviously, many, many years ago. But they sort of landed at that beginning stage of the process, like, let’s make the interview process efficient and weed out as many people as we can so we can optimize our time and so on and so forth. But I don’t like the idea of having a candidate jump through all those hoops in the beginning before a human has even spoken to them and really understood what they bring to the table. So, yeah, I agree with you 100%. There’s a place for them. It is not in the interview process. 

Katie Leonard  
Yeah, I agree. And listen, we’re always evolving, right? Evolution. So as a person, what if I’m in that job for eight, 10 years, you know, use them ongoing too, because I may have answered these, you know, only take two seconds and choose your answer tests. And in three years from now, I might have a totally different thought on some of those questions, or I might’ve evolved through the work I was doing. So I just think that it’s not, I don’t think it’s practical as a filter. 

Jenna Hinrichsen
Right. And not a good crutch. We want hiring managers and recruiters to really use their intuition and their skills and their questions that they’re using to really make decisions, not using a tool to say, Okay, this person came back, you know, whatever, however it’s rated on there, if it’s a red, yellow, green, or a negative or whatever it is, and then just move forward to the next person, you’re not really engaged in the process. And therefore as a hiring manager, recruiter, you’re not really learning and what you need to look for. So yeah, I think there’s a place for them at just like anything else in recruiting. It can’t really be replaced with technology. There’s got to be that human component and it’s got to fit into the puzzle in the right place in order for it to really be effective, I think. 

Katie Leonard  
Absolutely, absolutely agree. Great question. 

Jenna Hinrichsen  
All right, so one last question for you. I’d like to end every podcast with this question with every guest, just because I think it’s really interesting to hear people’s different perspectives on career advice. So what is your top career tip that you’d like to share with our listeners? And it doesn’t have to be about this topic. It can really be about anything. But if you could give one piece of advice to our listeners what would that be? 

Katie Leonard 
Listen, I have a lot of advice over the years. I have to pick my top one. I think my main tip or piece of advice, and this is whether somebody is applying or career searching for job opportunities, or somebody actually working in a job, or even people developing new business. these prospecting and BD people, I would say my advice is to be intentional, So what I mean by that is when you’re, you know, reaching out for a job, a career opportunity, whether it’s applying or whatever, don’t make one resume version and blindly send it to all different jobs. It is really lazy job search to not shift around your summary, your objective, move your bullets around to the hot buttons of the job description or that company size or that company mission or whatever it might be. know, shift things around and be intentional with your application. It’s my pet peeve receiving resumes like that. 
But also be intentional with communicating with people. Don’t be afraid on LinkedIn. You know, that’s what LinkedIn’s for. It’s a social media business networking platform. You’re applying to a job. Also reach out to some people that work there. Just connect with them. If you’re a little bit shy to actually send them a direct message, but there’s nothing better than getting a message from a candidate. Hey, I applied to your job, but I really would love to chat with you because I bring this to the table, looking forward to hearing from you, but it makes sense. The subject line makes sense and their note to me makes sense. Their application goes right to the top of the stack. I get all excited. I get them at least on a call. So be intentional while applying to job and career searching, working in a job, you know, be intentional while you’re there.  
We never know how long we’re going to be in a job, we always hope we’re going to be there forever, right? It’s my retirement. But you just don’t know. So while you’re there, use the company resources, whatever benefits, professional development. Hey, make friends while you’re there. Do some of the social activities provided to you. Better yourself so that, I like to say, when you’re looking for a new job or you’re taking a job, always be taking that job intending to take the next job after it, so how am going to better myself in this job and excel and succeed to get where I want to be going in the five year plan or the 10 year plan? So, and then in business development, pet peeve as head of TA is when I’m receiving prospect emails via AI and mass email, and they have no idea what my company does, what we’re working on, what my background might be. I even get it from past colleagues – they don’t read where I’m working now and they ask me a question where I’m going, wait, did you even look at my background? did you just go to me and say this, or did you actually go look at my background and see what I might be up to these days? so just be intentional. I think, I think that’s my main tip. 

Jenna Hinrichsen   
And I think that’s a great call out because there’s, talked earlier on about interviewing being a two way street. So, managers need to really engage in that and candidates are interviewing. But this is a good call out, think, because candidates also have to remember, I think the perception a lot of times is that companies are, you know, screening through applicants so fast, they’re not really looking or they’re not getting the follow up they want. But what are you doing in your search as a job seeker or a candidate? Are you being intentional to your point? Are you really putting the effort in to make yourself stand out? And so I think that’s where candidates really have to really be specific when they’re applying to jobs, what it is that they feel makes them the right fit for that job. And that is exactly what you said. It’s going to stand out to the person who’s looking. So if you want companies to be individual when it comes to your application, then you also have to put that same effort in. So I think it’s great. 

Katie Leonard  
Absolutely. So many times people just keep their objective the same on their resume or their summary. And can have a versatile career search, you know, I myself could, there’s a few different areas I could go into. So I’m not going to send one document out to all different jobs. And it just really turns, turns you off, right? Whether you’re doing business development, like I said, or whatever, but also yes, while you’re in jobs, use those company resources, benefits, professional development and be intentional while you’re there. Make connections, connect with them on LinkedIn while you’re working with them, update your resume while you’re working there, all the things, yeah. 

Jenna Hinrichsen 
I agree. Those are great, great tips. Well, this was awesome. Thank you for joining me today, Katie, and for sharing all your insights. I think this is super helpful and I’m excited for our audience to be able to hear all these tips and takeaways. And then make sure as our listeners, subscribe to this podcast. And if you have a topic that we haven’t covered yet that you’re interested in, go ahead and put it in the comments and let us know and we will pick up that topic for a future episode. And we will see you next time. Thanks again, Katie. 

Katie Leonard  
Thank you so much, it was my pleasure. All right, bye guys, thank you.   

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