Critical Incident Technique Structured Interview Questions   Critical incidents are “stories” of real events that describe effective or ineffective job behavior. They are valuable for several reasons. First of all, they are data, not opinions. The data provided in a carefully gathered critical incident depend only on the memory and the observation skills of the person describing the incident. Second, they can be gathered from a number of sources; supervisors, team colleagues, customers, to provide a different perspective of the positions or of effective performance. Third, critical incidents lead directly to behavior description questions for applicants with related job experience. For applicants without job related experience, these critical incidents provide the material to create other situations similar to those describe in a job-related incident, but more likely to draw on general situations candidates have experienced. Situational/or Critical Incident Interview Questions can farther communicate job expectations. In simple terms, goal-setting theory suggests that a person’s future behaviors are strongly influenced by his or her behavioral intentions or goals. Using this assumption, the purpose of the situational interview questions is to identify job candidates’ work-related behavioral intentions by presenting them with a series of incidents which might occur on the job, and for each one asking, “What would you do in this situation?” Clearly a critical feature of situational interview question is their focus on tapping meaningful samples of behavior. In other words, situational questions will be valid to the extent that they parallel events which actually occur on the job. The closer they reflect real life situations, the more likely these questions will predict future job performance. Good critical incidents describe the situation as exactly and objectively as possible. They are not evaluative. They should not reveal the names of the people involved. An example of an effective critical incident, or situation interview question for selecting a bookkeeper in a busy residential care facility. “You are trying to do a cost analysis from all the various sections of the facility, people are very busy and don’t see the importance of this information, so they aren’t cooperating. What would you do?” Another example: One of your employees has misunderstood your instructions and incorrectly completed a task which you assigned to him. This has caused a severe problem in your section. What would you do?

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