Interviewing myself for an HR Business Partner Job: Interview Questions and Answers

so do you want to become an hr business partner do you go to interviews and you struggle to find the right answers and the things to say are you unsure about what a good interview answer looks like so in this video i'll be showing you how to answer hr business partner behavioural based interview questions based on my experience working as an hr business partner and from the times that i've had to recruit hr business partners as well so these are fictitious examples based on my experience and the experiences of people in my network so i've

written a few questions and then i'll be providing you with what i think is an ideal way or a suggested way to answer that question so the three questions that i'll be going through will assess your ability to operate as a strategic partner your ability to operate as a coach and your ability to operate as a crisis manager and those three roles are three subsets which make up the hr business partner role overall which i've covered in a separate video which if you haven't watched i recommend that you have a look at that first and

then you can come back to this video to get more understanding of how to answer the questions okay so let's jump into the first question so this first question is designed to assess your ability to operate as a strategic partner so as a strategic partner you should really understand and be across the key details of the business or the organization that you are supporting so if it's a for-profit organization how does it make money if it's a service organization or not-for-profit who are the key clients that the business or the organization needs to do service

who do you provide support to and you should really understand any people trends or impacts or industry changes that might impact the business in the future so the question is tell us about a time in which you've led an hr initiative or you've created an hr initiative which introduced a competitive advantage to your organization so let's have a look at how i would suggest to answer that question so i was working for a pharmaceutical sales company and i had been at the company for just under a year i was employed in the role of hr

advisor but i was actually the sole hr representative for my state and i was reporting to an hr business partner who was in another part of the country and so i was able to own and implement a lot of things and operate at a senior level i was part of the state leadership team so what i'm trying to do in this part of the answer is i'm trying to demonstrate to the interviewer that whilst i was employed as an hr advisor i was actually operating at a more senior level and i had more autonomy and

independence to make decisions and during one of my regular one-on-ones with the executive director of sales who was the most senior leader in the state i mentioned to her that i had completed some analysis on our resignation data for the last five years and i'd noticed that on average our sales specialists resigned after approximately two years of service our attrition was up 17 i think year over year and our time to feel for sales specialists was also up by i think it was about 25 and at the time we weren't conducting formal exit interviews so

what i'm doing there is i'm trying to establish any key metrics or data that i had as part of the situation and task in this example hr is sometimes criticized for not having a business focus or a metrics focus so if you do have any data or figures that you can remember and you can recall when you are answering an interview question i think that's a really helpful way to demonstrate to your interviewer that you do have a commercial focus as an hr practitioner so during the discussion i asked her if it would be okay

to start conducting exit interviews and to contact our ex-employees who had resigned during the last five years to conduct interviews with them i also discussed the idea of conducting stay interviews with all the current sales analysts so she thought it was a good idea and she said that she would let her sales managers know and i told her that i would conduct a meeting with them to explain what i was proposing prior to meeting with their employees the sales specialists so what i'm trying to do here is i'm trying to demonstrate that as an hr

practitioner i engage and talk to leaders prior to engaging with their direct employees in the past i have been involved in situations in which i've seen other hr practitioners who have gotten into a bit of trouble with the leaders that they were supporting because they didn't give them a heads up about what they were doing in their business i think it's always best practice to give your leaders a heads up about an idea that you have or initiative especially if it involves people that report to them so that you can just get them across things

so over the next six weeks i conducted stay interviews with the 30 sales specialists in our state plus two exit interviews with sales specialists that had just resigned and an additional 10 interviews with sales specialists who had resigned during the last five years there were more sales specialists who resigned however some declined to meet with me and so i wasn't able to to get data from them so here lots of detail in this component i'm really making it clear to the interviewer what i did what part i played and when you go for an interview

you're really telling a story and you want it to be detailed and you want it to have facts and and you want to have specifics whilst i was conducting the interviews i reviewed the strategic plan for the area that i was supporting and i realized that based on our projections and our goals we were going to need to continue to grow our pool of sales specialists our attrition rates were going to hurt the business objectives so what i'm doing here is i'm linking back to the business that i was supporting and i'm linking back to

their strategic plan so what do they need to do and how does this people component how does this people issue impact the strategic plan overall and how can i as an hr practitioner as an hr business partner how can i come up with an initiative that will help to address that issue so after i analyze all of the data i developed a solution to address the retention issue i propose that we come up with a professional development program which would commence after employees reached two years service during the first year of a sales specialist tenure

with the company that i was working for they completed a pretty rigorous training program during year two there wasn't a formal training program so it appeared that we would train our employees for the first year then they'd spend the second year honing their skills and then they would leave to work for a competitor so my proposal was aiming to to stop that uh stop those resignations and the program that i developed was designed to turn high-performing sales specialists into senior sales specialists it was a cohort based program which ran for about 18 months i worked

on it with the corporate learning and development team and then i ran it as a pilot with my area in my state after i implemented the professional development program the turnover percentage for sales specialists ended up reducing by i think it was about 15 in my state our attrition rate for sales specialists it became the lowest across the country and the pilot that i developed was rolled out across the country and led to other states reducing their attrition as well so i was really happy with how it all turned out in the result component that's

where you really want to demonstrate what did your actions achieve and again if you have any metrics if you have any data if you have any stories that you can add in terms of why it made a difference it's really important to include those so you can demonstrate that value to your interviewer so this next question is designed to assess your ability to operate as a coach as an hr business partner you will work closely with leaders and employees and often you will have to provide some feedback to them that at first might be difficult

to hear and the feedback that you're providing it might be about their behaviors or it might be about their performance and often it can cause relationship issues but often if you handle it well and you're comfortable and you practice getting better at dealing with conflict it can strengthen those relationships so this question that i'll be answering is tell us about a time when you had to coach a senior leader to improve their behaviors and or performance so in this situation i was working for a manufacturing company and i was in the role of senior hr

advisor and i'd been at the company for about two and a half years i was given a new client group in a different part of the business that i hadn't supported yet and i was familiar with the area and the leadership team and i was aware that the plant manager of that leadership team he had a bit of a reputation for having a bit of a unique leadership style some people found him really difficult to work with and others thought he was really good at getting things done but i didn't have any experience with him

firsthand i hadn't worked with him before so in an hr interview it can sometimes be difficult to maintain that balance between professionalism and confidentiality while still providing the interviewer what they need to hear especially when it comes to an example where they're wanting you to go into detail about poor behaviors and in this example that is what i'm trying to convey i'm trying to give them enough that they understand what was going on but still maintaining confidentiality and professionalism so during my first leadership team meeting one of the plant managers direct reports was really late

to the meeting and the plant manager got really upset and yelled at the person who was late and this was in front of the whole leadership team and the plant manager used some pretty forceful language he also said some comments like you're always late it shows up in your performance you're late to my meetings and you're late meeting my production schedules said something like get it together or i'll find someone who can so it was it was pretty full on it was uh pretty brutal to see so after the meeting ended some of his employees

were laughing about what had happened but others seemed and told me that they were pretty disappointed so first thing i did was i made sure that i checked in with the employee who was yelled at he said he was okay he said you know he acknowledged that he had some issues with getting things done on time he understood it was frustrating however he didn't appreciate being spoken to in that way in front of everyone else he also mentioned that he had some personal issues going on at home so i provided some advice to him on

how he could handle the conversation with the plant manager and i also said i'd check in with him later that week just to see how he was going so i had my regular one-on-one scheduled with the plant manager that afternoon and so i spent some time preparing how i wanted to handle the meeting with him now bear in mind he was a very senior leader in the organization he was very well respected and he had delivered a lot for the company so i knew that i had to handle the conversation uh in in a careful

way so what i'm trying to do here is i'm trying to convey to the interviewer that when it comes to these types of issues i like to take the time to think about what i'm going to do and i like to apply a methodical approach so we sat down for our one-on-one and first off i checked in with him just to make sure that things were okay i wanted to determine if there was anything going on that may have led to his outburst he said he was fine and that things were going well i then

said that i needed to provide him with some feedback regarding the leadership team meeting in the morning and i explained that whilst we were early in our relationship a big part of my role was to provide him with feedback and coaching and to provide him with some awareness of how things were going for his leadership team at first he seemed a bit surprised but he asked me to continue and so i replayed what he had said during the leadership team meeting and i explained that whilst i thought the feedback may have been justified the delivery

could have been handled differently and i explained that his actions had left some of his team members feeling a little bit disappointed and had a bit of a negative impact on the team's overall psychological safety and then asked him what he thought so first he was defensive but eventually after some more discussion the conversation became more productive and he mentioned that in the past he had been given feedback from his own leaders that his drive for results and harsh feedback resulted in his employees not wanting to take any risks because they were afraid of failing

and receiving harsh treatment harsh feedback which was actually contrary to what he was wanting to achieve he wanted a culture in which his leaders took risks they made mistakes and then they innovated they learned from those mistakes and so we spent the rest of the meeting brainstorming some tactics of how he could still drive performance yet not negatively impact his team's psychological safety so watching these back as an hr practitioner it can be a really interesting experience and if you haven't filmed yourself answering behavioural based interview questions or you haven't worked with a coach on

how to improve i highly recommend it it's a really easy way to lift the standard of your interview questions and as i'm watching this just a few reflections there i mentioned a couple of times the the word we which i think is okay in the context of this answer and saying we brainstormed some tactics however i just wanted to flag if you were going for an interview it's really important that you maintain a focus on saying i did this and i did that if you're talking about a team example i think that's fine but make

sure you make it clear what part you played if you say we did this and then we developed this strategy and then we launched this program it really won't be clear for your interviewer what part you played what was your contribution so i recommend thinking about how often you say we did this and we did that try to focus on what part you played and using that high language so during our meeting he thanked me for providing feedback and said that in the past he hadn't received behavioral feedback from his hr advisors and he asked

me to continue doing so and to help him work on improving his behaviors in terms of immediate improvement he had a meeting with the employee that he had yelled at and he apologized for the way that he had treated him from a long-term perspective over the course of the next few months there were a few similar outbursts however his style began to change significantly and we had a few more sessions in which i would provide him with feedback and awareness of his behaviors and some of the conversations they were they were quite heated they were

difficult however it significantly strengthened our relationship so over time the leadership team provided feedback that they felt safer to take more risks and innovate which led to some significant process improvements and achievements for the area of the business so in terms of the result there what i think is a good way to end your interview question is to talk about short-term and long-term improvements highlight to your interviewer what your actions contributed in the short term so immediately and then what your actions contributed in the long term and so you would have seen there that i

talked about process improvements and innovation by the leadership team which resulted from the leader changing their style which resulted from my coaching when i was providing the leader with feedback and and helping them to work through their behaviors so this final question is designed to assess your ability to operate in a crisis as an hr business partner often you will have to deal with things like workplace violence workplace theft social media issues relationship breakdowns due to employee interactions drug and alcohol issues and even unfortunately employee deaths and as an hr business partner your your ability

to respond in a crisis is something that you need to work on and have as a key competency in terms of your ability as an hr professional so this question is a simple one and again just a reminder this is a fictitious example i've put together an answer based on how i would approach the question and i'm hoping that that will give you an idea of how you could approach a similar question in an interview in the future so the question is describe a crisis that you had to handle so i was working at a

theme park in the role of hr advisor the theme park employed approximately 500 employees during peak periods and there were some ups and downs in terms of employee levels due to the holiday periods i wasn't responsible for recruitment that was handled centrally by the head office because i wasn't involved in the recruitment i wasn't able to directly influence the quality of the candidates so sometimes employees would arrive at the theme park and i would handle their inductions and sometimes there were issues with performance and behaviors the theme park employed a lot of casual employees and

the demographic overall was predominantly younger employees so sometimes we had some issues with employees having disagreements with each other sometimes there were fights on social media and in some cases there were instances of theft so in this particular situation the operations manager called me to say that he had received a call from our head office someone had submitted an anonymous complaint through to our customer service team in the head office regarding one of our employees apparently they had seen our employee stealing money from one of the cash registers in the theme park gift shop and

they provided a specific date and time of when it allegedly occurred they provided the employee's name which they likely would have obtained from his name tag so in terms of the first steps i asked the operations manager if the employee was currently rostered on for a shift and he said he had already checked the roster and he wasn't due for a shift until the next day the operations manager he was already pretty fired up about what was going on and he was already asking me whether this would be enough to terminate the employee he had

apparently had a lot of issues with this particular employee in the past so first thing i did was i made sure that i calmed the manager down and i reminded him that at this stage we really had no evidence regarding the employee's alleged misconduct and it was also an anonymous complaint so we needed to remain calm and we needed to make sure that we were dealing with facts so in my experience leaders can get caught up in the moment and sometimes they can let their emotions take over a bit which is is really obviously understandable

for a lot of leaders this will be one of the only times that they deal with an employee misconduct issue however this was one of many times that i've had to deal with an employee theft issue throughout my career so what i'm trying to do in this part of the answer is i'm trying to demonstrate that i can remain calm in a crisis and that i have empathy for a leader given that for a lot of leaders as i mentioned this will be the first time that they are dealing with a situation like this and

so they're not used to it and they can get caught up in the emotion and i'm also trying to demonstrate my experience throughout my career that it's not the first time that i've dealt with it and that i've dealt with it a few times and i have the experience in order to deal with it in a professional way so after verifying that the employee was not currently working i moved some of my meetings around so that i could prioritize the investigation obviously in these types of situations it's really important to move quickly and understand the

situation so i called our it department and i asked for some security footage of the alleged time i then pulled the employee's roster to see if he was working at the date and time that they told us about i also verified who was logged into the cash register in the theme park gift shop and prior to reviewing the footage i was able to determine that he was the only employee rosted on at the specific date and time and he was also logged into the cash register at the alleged time of the theft i then reviewed

the security footage and unfortunately it was it was really clear on the camera that he opened the register and he took some money and he put it in his pocket and in the footage toward the back of the gift shop there was an elderly couple and it was really clear that they could see what was going on however our employee wasn't able to see them so he wasn't aware that he was being watched so what i'm trying to do in this component of the answer is i'm trying to demonstrate that i have applied a methodical

and a considered approach to the investigation so i'm referencing all the data points that i looked at and i'm also showing that i haven't just come to a quick decision so i explained what i discovered to the operations manager who wanted to call the employee and fire them straight away however i explained that we still had to follow our procedure and our policy and we needed to put allegations to the employee and allow them an opportunity to respond prior to making our decision so i put together some allegations i had them checked by our legal

and industrial relations team and then i prepared the operations manager for what we would say when we called the employee so we called the employee and we invited him to attend a disciplinary meeting the next afternoon and then we sent him a letter with allegations and also provided the security footage via a download link i really like to provide evidence to employees at least 24 hours in advance so that they have an opportunity to review and consider what they would like to do so they have all the information that we have so the next day

the manager and i we met with the employee and we're about to commence the disciplinary conference when he gave us his written resignation so he apologized for his actions and he also returned the money that he had taken he mentioned that he was having some trouble at home and he went into a lot of detail about that but i won't be sharing that as part of this example so we accepted his resignation and we also provided him with access to our employee assistance program even though he wasn't an employee ex-employees at our company had access

to three sessions after they resigned uh speaking with the operations manager it really just felt like the right thing to do given what he had shared with us about what was going on at home so we processed his resignation and then i helped the operations manager to prepare a team briefing in which he could remind employees about their obligations to be honest and procedures that they needed to follow and also provide them with access to our employee assistance program in case they were having any trouble at home obviously there was lots of questions from employees

about what had happened and where the employee was however we didn't go into detail all in all i was happy that i was able to respond quickly and guide the leader however it really was a bit of a sad situation in the end okay so that's the final answer there i've covered how to respond to a question regarding your ability to operate as a strategic partner your ability to operate as a coach and as you just saw there your ability to operate as a crisis manager i'm really hoping this has given you some clarity and

some understanding of how to answer an hr business partner interview question it's a funny thing job interviews often you don't get a lot of feedback in terms of how you performed if you weren't successful and so i'm hoping this will give you some clarity around what an ideal answer looks like in terms of the questions that i was answering if you are struggling with job interviews i highly recommend that you take the time to record yourself answering a question or you work with a coach who can assist you or even if you just write down

some of your examples and you work through them using the star format the more that you practice answering in the star format and the more that you practice what your stories are that you want to share in an interview the more that you will increase your opportunities for success in terms of getting that next role i really hope that this has been helpful if this has been a helpful video for you i would love it if you give it a thumbs up and share it with anyone else that you think it might help thank you

so much for taking the time to watch and i will see you in the next video