Audition Type #3: Behavioral Auditions

A behavioral audition is one where you want to see some specific candidate behaviors. Management auditions typically fall into this category. But especially if you're hiring for an agile team, you might want to see how a candidate exhibits behaviors, such as coaching, feedback, how the person participates in a standup meeting or in a retrospective.

If you want to see some specific behaviors, first, return to your job analysis. What are those essential technical and non-technical skills? Can you make a behavioral audition around those skills?

You might want to see if the candidate will be a smooth addition to a team or a disruptive addition. In that case, you ask the candidate to do some work with one or more members of the team. You'll ask the candidate how that work went, and you'll need to debrief the members of your team (with open-ended questions) about what it was like to work with the candidate.

Try a focused conversation for the debrief:

1. What stood out for you?
2. Where were you challenged?
3. What insights do you have about this candidate?
4. What do you recommend we do with this candidate?

Behavioral auditions are the most difficult to design. In my experience, you can see the behaviors if you use an Audition Type 1: Technical Audition, you are likely to see the behaviors you want to see. But to know what you want to see, you've got to do a job analysis.