I use this activity alongside Take Your Pick as part of the recruitment and selection course. I ask the delegates to analyse each interview and tell me the pros and cons of each method and we discuss which method is best and the current method that they use when interviewing. We then go on to do the role play interview using the CV’s from Take Your Pick. This allows the delegates to practice their interview skills and techniques.

This exercise is a very powerful tool to use in any Interviewing Skills courses, either for interviewees or interviewers.

The simple examples clearly show the differences between traditional and behaviour based interviewing and give the learners a lot to talk about.

I used this exercise at the beginning of the training session, to highlight some of the areas of concern with their current interviewing methods. One learner even went off to print off his recent interview script to check it out.

Very easy for all learners to see the advantages of the behaviour based interviewing over the more traditional type, but raised some questions about how to get the information they really needed, which led us into another exercise provided by you.

This exercise was of great use with this particular group and I feel that it will be of great benefit in future interviewing skills programmes.

I used this exercise as part of an interview skills training course for a group of managers who had not been previously trained in this kind of questioning approach. The exercise of comparing two types of interview conversations really made people think about how behavioural/competency based interviews are far more beneficial in selecting the right person and are also less likely to lead the interviewer into discriminatory behaviour. Earlier in the training we had talked about employment law affecting recruitment and the questions you can/shouldn’t ask – it was immediately spotted that the “traditional” interview would go against current legal requirements, therefore also reinforcing the learning from our previous discussion!