Sound advice from Dr. Bob.

Among styles, would advise not using the "hostile interview." A few years ago I was on an interview that I could only describe as akin to a police interrogation (at least the TV version, fortunately never had the real thing...).

After being shocked by the experience, I read up on the tactic. Some places use it to see how people react to pressure or uncomfortable situations.

However, my reaction is that this tactic overlooks that that the canidate is also evaluating the company and the people with whom he/she would be working. Needless to say, the hostile interviewer made a poor impression with me. And since there's no way to know if this is the interviewer's normal personality or just a "interview tactic" -- I hedged my bets and later withdrew my name. This likely wasn't the kind of person with whom I'd want to work.

As Dr. Bob mentioned, there's ways to probe answers within behavioral interviewing without resorting to hostile interviewing. And compared to other styles, I think behavioral interviewing can yield the best results. After all, when you're describing a problem or offering a solution at work, isn't it usually in a story-like format?

I find it most effective to combine the two: behavioral with "do the job in the interview". Ask the "tell me about a time when.." question, and then communicate a current challenge and ask how the candidate would handle it. This should tell you if the candidate learned anything from the previous experience, and also if he or she is going to be able to solve your problem. Bob's right though - the devil is in the details.

As an HR person for IT, who's used behavioral or competency interviewing for a decade, I concur with your statements about the importance of probing and the difficulty of a story teller standing up to the probing. Many experienced people know what they ought to do in certain situations; but when actually in a situation, for any number of reasons, they don't do that. Even a non-technical person can do pick up on some red flags - such as a person who tells a story with only 'I' (or never says 'I'); or a person who blames things on his boss/colleagues/the customer etc. More often than not, a person gets going on telling a story, and they reveal more than they realize. (And the person who can't tell a story - every bit has to be painfully drawn out - is also telling you a good deal!)