Ask HN: What is the point of behavioral interview questions?
Having been on the recruiter side, it&#x27;s very simple why we regularly ask behavioral questions.  It&#x27;s because we want to make sure your behavior is appropriate.<p>As you said, communication is a necessary skill. Even in a world where email, text, etc are becoming normal means of communication, you need to be able to clearly communicate on a regular basis, extemporaneously and face-to-face with another person. Your ability to communicate your weaknesses and strengths well in an interview is absolutely essential to anyone during the hiring process.  Quite frankly, most companies don&#x27;t care if you&#x27;re the absolute best in your technical field - if you can&#x27;t match the culture of the office, you&#x27;re only suited to remote freelancing - if that!  Remember that HR has to constantly cover themselves - every employee is (potentially) a liability waiting to happen; if they hire someone who contributes to a negative&#x2F;toxic work environment or is a sexual harassment risk (either as victim or aggressor), they&#x27;re likely going to be fired for introducing that risk to the company.  You have to tell HR in language they understand and can quantify that you are not a lawsuit risk.<p>The point is definitely not about prepared presentation, it&#x27;s about being able to work and exist with other human beings like what HR calls &quot;a normal person&quot; - which is really a person with no negative qualities that will potentially endanger the company.  Believe me, I&#x27;ve had a few red-flag interviews where the person came off very rude when I asked them about their personal and professional weaknesses; or when they had an issue with a manager.  I&#x27;ve also had interviews that felt &#x27;weird&#x27; because the person seemed to fixate on the gender of each of his previous managers.<p>Also, realize that some of these questions inform how interviewers view your references.  If you list a certain manager as a reference, you&#x27;re likely to be asked about a time you had a frustrating experience with that specific person as a manager - oh, and as a side note, if you&#x27;re asked for three references in a tech field, do everything in your power to include one opposite-sex individual.  When we call to confirm the reference, we will in turn ask the reference about that same incident with you as an employee - what happened, what caused the situation, and how it was resolved.  We can&#x27;t do a proper 360 evaluation on you, but we can certainly try to see a more full picture from the people you mention as references and their answers to questions about your conduct.<p>Your technical skills are either there at the level the employer&#x27;s needed level, or they aren&#x27;t - in the latter case you got filtered either by the ATS or someone like I used to be.  It&#x27;s the interpersonal skills which aren&#x27;t well-described by a resume.<p>One other thing - &quot;He&#x27;s a great guy and really good at resolving interpersonal challenges&quot; is a stronger internal selling point from a recruiter to an HR hiring manager than you&#x27;d immediately think.  Remember, the default for the company is that you&#x27;re too expensive - some recruiters (internal and third-party) have to justify not offshoring a role before they can even begin suggesting candidates.  If you&#x27;re not going to contribute to the office positively and the HR manager thinks you&#x27;re going to be a challenge or a danger, you will not get hired.