- Solutions
- Products
- Community
- Resources
- Company
Create incredible candidate experiences that communicate your brand, mission, and values with recruitment marketing solutions.
Learn moreCommunicate effectively and efficiently with the candidates that can drive your business forward.
Learn moreSelect the right candidates to drive your business forward and simplify how you build winning, diverse teams.
Learn moreHelp your best internal talent connect to better opportunities and see new potential across your entire organization.
Learn moreCommunicate collectively with large groups of candidates and effectively tackle surges in hiring capacity.
Learn moreAccess tools that help your team create a more inclusive culture and propel your DEI program forward.
Learn moreRebound and respond to the new normal of retail with hiring systems that are agile enough to help you forge ahead.
Learn moreAccelerate the hiring of key talent to deliver point of care and support services that meet and exceed your promise of patient satisfaction.
Learn moreAttract and engage candidates with technical competencies, accelerate hiring for much-needed skills, and advance expertise within your valued workforce.
Learn moreSimplify how you recruit finance, insurance, and banking candidates with a unified platform built to match top talent with hard-to-fill roles.
Learn moreYour business strategy depends on your people strategy. Keep both in lockstep with the iCIMS Talent Cloud.
Learn moreBuild an engaging, high-converting talent pipeline that moves your business forward.
Learn moreDeliver the innovation your talent team needs, along with the global scale and security you demand.
Learn moreDeliver tailored technology experiences that delight users and power your talent transformation with the iCIMS Talent Cloud.
Learn moreThe #1 ATS in market share, our cloud-based recruiting software is built for both commercial and large, global employers.
Learn more Talk to salesAttract the best talent for your business with powerful, on-brand career websites that excite candidates and drive engagement.
Learn more Talk to salesCombine behavior-based marketing automation with AI insights to build talent pipelines, engage candidates with multi-channel marketing campaigns, and automatically surface the right talent for the job.
Learn more Talk to salesEmpower candidates with automated self-service, qualification screening, and interview scheduling through an AI-enabled digital assistant.
Learn more Talk to salesSimplify employee onboarding with automated processes that maximize engagement and accelerate productivity.
Learn more Talk to salesVerify skills with game-changing levels of automation and simplicity to improve the quality of hire at scale.
Learn more Talk to salesModernize, streamline, and accelerate your communication with candidates and employees.
Learn more Talk to salesTransform the talent experience by showcasing your authentic employer brand through employee-generated video testimonials.
Learn more Talk to salesSimplify recruiting, dynamically engage talent, and reduce hiring bias with job matching and recruiting chatbot technology.
Learn moreStreamline and centralize your HR tech stack with configurable, flexible, secure and reliable integrations.
Learn moreHow a beloved restaurant hires 40,000+ annually with a great candidate experience.
Learn moreThousands strong, our global community of talent professionals includes creatives, innovators, visionaries, and experts.
Learn moreTogether we’re creating the world’s largest ecosystem of integrated recruiting technologies.
Learn morePartner with our global professional services team to develop a winning strategy, build your team and manage change.
Learn moreExplore our network of more than 300 certified, trusted third-party service and advisory partners.
Learn moreUncover unique market insights, explore best practices and gain access to talent experts across out library of content.
Get resourcesExpert guidance about recruitment solutions, changes in the industry, and the future of talent.
Learn moreStay up to date with the latest terminology and verbiage in the HR software ecosystem.
Learn moreEmployers everywhere improve hiring efficiently and save money using iCIMS. Estimate the potential business value you can achieve.
Learn moreDive into the Class of 2023 Report highlighting this cohort’s expectations and where employers are willing — and able — to meet them.
Watch nowPartner with iCIMS to build the right strategies, processes, and experience to build a winning workforce.
Learn moreExpert guidance about recruitment solutions, changes in the industry, and the future of talent.
Learn moreDeliver the innovation your talent team needs, along with the global scale and security you demand.
Learn moreView press releases, media coverage, and the latest hiring data. See what analysts are saying about iCIMS.
Learn moreiCIMS is the Talent Cloud company that empowers organizations to attract, engage, hire, and advance the talent that builds a winning workforce.
Learn moreGet to know the award-winning leadership team shaping the future of the recruiting software industry.
Learn moreWe believe the future of work isn't something that "happens" to you. It's something you create. We actively create the future of work with our customers every day.
Learn moreiCIMS is committed to being a responsible and ethical corporate citizen, which is why Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) initiatives are strategic imperatives.
Learn moreStreamline your tech stack and take advantage of a better user experience and stronger data governance with ADP and the iCIMS Talent Cloud.
Learn moreThe combined power of iCIMS and Infor helps organizations strategically align their business and talent objectives.
Learn moreOur award-winning partnership with Microsoft is grounded in a shared desire to transform the workplace and the hiring team experience.
Learn moreOur partnership with Ultimate Kronos Group (UKG) supports the entire talent lifecycle by bringing frictionless recruiting solutions to UKG Pro Onboarding.
Learn moreLet’s get in touch. Reach out to learn more about iCIMS products and services.
Learn moreInterviews are aspirational. We hope they’re enough to get to know a candidate, to get a sense of his or her character. But that’s easier said than done. Behavioral interview questions can help us determine whether what candidates say about themselves lines up with reality.
Patty McCord served as Chief Talent Officer at Netflix for 14 years. It was McCord who helped shape and codify the company’s core values in a slideshow called Netflix’s Culture: Freedom & Responsibility.
As a manifesto on hiring philosophy, it doesn’t pull any punches. In it McCord writes, “Many companies have nice sounding value statements displayed in the lobby, such as: Integrity, communication, respect, excellence.”
The following slide continues: “Enron, whose leaders went to jail, and which went bankrupt from fraud, had these values displayed in their lobby: Integrity, communication, respect, excellence.”
McCord goes on to say that these traits aren’t what Enron really valued – at least, not enough to live by. While many companies have nice-sounding values, those values don’t determine who gets rewarded, promoted, or let go.
What companies really value, according to McCord, are behaviors and skills.
Logically, this means companies should hire for the behaviors and skills they want demonstrated. Which begs the question – why do so many recruiters and hiring managers look for culture fit instead?
In an article titled How to Hire, published in the Harvard Business Review, McCord explains her aversion to the idea of culture fit. “What most people really mean when they say someone is a good fit culturally is that he or she is someone they’d like to have a beer with,” writes McCord. “But people with all sorts of personalities can be great at the job you need done.”
Download the Top 5 hiring challenges and how to solve them.
Behavioral interview questions aren’t about culture fit. They’re about mission fit.
In other words, the answers candidates give to behavioral interview questions speaks to what they would or wouldn’t do in a given situation (presumably, this may have benefited Enron). In questions that ask for a specific example, candidates may outline what specific actions they took and the results they got (along with what they learned from it) .
Behavioral interviews questions are different from other interview questions in that they have less to do with personality than actions. They’re not designed to help “get to know someone” in the sense of going for a beer together. “Tell me where you want to be in five years” isn’t part of the equation.
That’s not to say culture fit, team camaraderie, and “chumminess” aren’t a good thing. But often times that’s surface deep. Real togetherness and teamwork happens when everyone is aligned to a clearly defined mission and rowing in the same direction.
To put it another way, there are plenty of people I would love to have a beer with who I wouldn’t want to work with. Can I rely on this person to take ownership when challenges arise? Will this person be as thoughtful and respectful to clients as they were to me during their interview?
This is where behavioral interview questions shine.
There’s a famous quote by philosopher Will Durant (sometimes misattributed to Aristotle), that goes, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” The best behavioral interview questions seek to uncover that excellence – or potential for excellence – in candidates.
Here are a few different categories of behavioral interview questions, along with some examples you can steal for your next interview.
Ready for more? Learn how 10 employers are overcoming today’s hiring challenges here.