We've been writing about situational interview questions.I want to highlight the difference between experience-based questions and future-oriented questions (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart, & Wright, 2023). In my experience, experience-based questions are much more effective at getting something real from candidates.

For example, if a recruiter asked me, "What would you do if you disagreed with a decision by your boss?" I would respond with a textbook-perfect response about gathering the data, framing it in a way that the boss would be most likely to hear it, and carefully constructing my argument.All very logical, but also pretty divorced from the real stress involved in disagreeing with the boss.

If, on the other hand, a recruiter asked me, "Tell me about a time you disagreed with a decision by your boss," two very different real-life incidents would come to mind, and I would tell about both of them. I'd tell about the time I thought my boss was wrong about a $200 million project he was pushing but went along with the decision after he made clear my job depended on it.I'd recount how he was soon promoted, I got his job, and spent five years dealing with the impact of that bad decision.I was eventually fired because the project was such a bad investment. Then I would tell about an argument with my next boss over the size of layoffs in a manufacturing plant.My team and I had done extensive work and believed we could reduce staffing by 10% and still have a good business. My boss said it had to be 25%.I was convinced by the data that the business could not sustain a large cut and I pushed back.He fired me over that, but the decision still sits well with me.

Try that little thought exercise on your own experience.Pick an incident from your past that illustrates something core about you.Imagine a future-oriented question (what would you do if...) and how you would respond, and then imagine an experience-based question about the same issue.Would you respond differently?If so, how?

Please include intext citations and references. Thanks!