Past behavior and performance are our best predictors of future behavior and performance. This truism is the basis for most employment screening. This does not mean that people cannot change work habits or behaviors; they often do. However, we can look to past behavior and see how and when these changes take place. A selection process, including an interview, must be based on assessment of the applicants ability to perform the essential functions of a position. With student jobs, assessing current skills or specific work experience may be less important factors than learning about behaviors that are transferable to the job.

In analyzing your student jobs, there are a number of ways to determine which work behaviors are the most critical. Consider past employees. What made them successful in carrying out job duties? If you had less than stellar student workers, what behaviors were they lacking? Some typical behaviors that are critical to many jobs include: ability to follow through; ability to collaborate and work as a member of a team; good customer relations skills; problem-solving skills; creativity; ability to communicate effectively with individuals from diverse backgrounds and cultures.

What techniques do you use in determining work behaviors that are important for success in a student job? Which behaviors have you identified to use in evaluating potential student employees?

Once you identify the behaviors that you want to evaluate, the next step is to create interview questions. These may be retrospective: “Tell me about a time when you participated as a member of a team to ___.” Or they may be prospective: “In this position, you would be working with a team of four other workers to ____. What would you do if one member of the team disagreed with an action that you and others had decided upon?” A retrospective question requires the applicant to articulate how they used certain behaviors in the past. A prospective question requires the applicant to apply their past behavior and experiences to typical situations that may occur on the job in the future.

As always, you will want to make sure that you are able to articulate the types of behaviors you are asking about. In the example above, you would first want to identify the elements of being an effective team member and then consider interview responses as a way to assess whether the applicant demonstrates these.

Hopefully you can share your success in designing interview questions with your campus colleagues. What questions have you found to be successful in screening the work behaviors of potential student employees? Are there questions that you have tried using that you would recommend others to avoid?

In future entries, we can explore other methods beyond interviews to assess the qualifications of potential student employees.