Does behavioural hiring replace the interview?

No. The profile prepares the interview and makes it more precise, but the interview, technical tests and references remain essential.

Do you need the candidate's consent to assess their profile?

According to the Spanish data protection authority's guide on employment relationships, personality tests in selection require the person's consent, after analysing proportionality and the legal basis.

Can you reject a candidate on their profile alone?

You should not. A profile describes preferences, not ability. And if the rejection depended solely on automated processing, Article 22 of the GDPR would give the candidate the right not to be subject to that decision.

What is culture fit and how do you assess it properly?

It is the match between how the person works and how the role and the team need them to work. It is assessed with observable behaviours written down before the process, never with personal affinity.

How long can you keep a candidate's data?

For as long as the process needs. To keep them in the talent pool for future vacancies, ask for their explicit permission and tell them how long their data will be kept.

Behavioural hiring: selecting for fit, not just the CV

By Deibson Silva · Reviewed on 23 October 2026

Behavioural hiring is a way of searching for and selecting candidates in which, beyond the CV, you define how the person needs to work in the role and test that against their profile and against real examples in the interview. The platform sorts candidates and explains the fit; a person always makes the hiring decision.

What is behavioural hiring?

It brings two practices together. Active search, often called headhunting, means not waiting for applications but going out to find people who could do the role well, whether or not they are looking for a job. Behavioural selection adds a question the CV does not answer: how that person works, how they decide, what drives them and whether that fits what the role and the team need.

It does not replace experience or knowledge. It completes them. A sound process looks at all three: what the person has done, what they know how to do and how they do it.

Why is the CV not enough?

Because it tells you what someone has done, but not how they did it or in which conditions they work best. Two people with the same CV can work in opposite ways: one needs autonomy, the other structure; one decides quickly, the other analyses before moving. Both can be excellent, in different roles.

Each source of information answers one question and has its own limit. The table helps you combine them without asking any of them for what it cannot give.

Source	What it adds	Its limit
CV	Experience, career path, education	Says nothing about how the person works
Behavioural profile	Working style, way of deciding, motivators	Describes preferences, not ability or results
Competency-based interview	Real examples of behaviour in specific situations	Only works if questions and scoring are prepared beforehand
Technical test	What the person can do in the task	Measures part of the role, not the whole role
References	How people who worked with them see them	Only with their permission and with relevant questions

How do you define the job profile?

Before you see any candidate, and together with the person who will manage the new hire. The order matters: if the profile is written after meeting someone, it ends up describing that someone.

A useful profile has three parts. The responsibilities of the role, in a few sentences. The behaviours that make it work, described so you can observe them: not good communication, but explains to non-technical clients why a deadline is moving. And the context: who they work with, how much autonomy they have, at what pace and under what time pressure.

Avoid two traps. The first is copying the profile of whoever does the job best today, which leads to hunting for clones and shutting out people who would do the work differently and just as well. The second is filling the profile with desirable traits without deciding which ones are essential.

How do you search for and shortlist candidates?

The search starts with what you already have: the talent pool, with candidates from earlier processes who know the company and were interested before. Then comes the active search, for example on LinkedIn, with written criteria drawn from the job profile.

Each candidate moves through the stages of the process: contact, first conversation, assessment, interview, decision. At every stage, record why someone moves forward or not, with the same criteria for everyone. Fit with the profile helps to sort candidates and to prepare the interview, but it should never be used to rule anyone out without further checking.

Good candidates who do not fit this vacancy are not lost: with their permission, they go back into the talent pool for the next one.

How do you use the profile in the interview?

As a script for asking better questions. If the profile suggests the person prefers to decide with complete data and the role requires quick decisions on partial information, the interview is the place to test it: tell me about a time you had to decide without all the information. What did you do, and what happened?

Competency questions ask for real examples, not hypotheticals. Scoring is prepared in advance: which answer shows the behaviour you are looking for and which does not. That way two interviewers can compare what they saw.

In the end, a person decides, combining the CV, the profile, the interview, the technical test and the references, and records why. Offering candidates the chance to see their own profile is a right as well as the best way to make the process feel fair.

What limits does the law set?

In Spain, the data protection authority's guide on employment relationships, updated in December 2025, states that personality tests in selection require the person's consent, after analysing proportionality and the legal basis, and that candidates have the right to access their results and to know the selection criteria.

Spain's Law 15/2022 bans limitations or exclusions on protected grounds in access to employment, including selection criteria, and its Article 9.5 bars employers from asking applicants about their health. The Workers' Statute also protects against discrimination in employment in Articles 4.2.c and 17.

If rejecting a candidate depended solely on an automatic calculation, Article 22 of the GDPR would apply. And since 2 February 2025 the EU AI Act has prohibited inferring a person's emotions at work, except for medical or safety reasons, and it treats AI systems for hiring and selection as high risk from 2 December 2027.

Which mistakes should you avoid?

Using culture fit as an excuse to hire people who resemble the team. The fit that matters is with the way of working the role needs, not with the interviewer's tastes.

Other frequent mistakes: rejecting on the profile without an interview; not telling candidates which assessment they will take and why; changing the criteria halfway through; not replying to those who do not go forward; and keeping candidates' data for longer than necessary without their permission.

Sources

Frequently asked questions

Does behavioural hiring replace the interview?: No. The profile prepares the interview and makes it more precise, but the interview, technical tests and references remain essential.
Do you need the candidate's consent to assess their profile?: According to the Spanish data protection authority's guide on employment relationships, personality tests in selection require the person's consent, after analysing proportionality and the legal basis.
Can you reject a candidate on their profile alone?: You should not. A profile describes preferences, not ability. And if the rejection depended solely on automated processing, Article 22 of the GDPR would give the candidate the right not to be subject to that decision.
What is culture fit and how do you assess it properly?: It is the match between how the person works and how the role and the team need them to work. It is assessed with observable behaviours written down before the process, never with personal affinity.
How long can you keep a candidate's data?: For as long as the process needs. To keep them in the talent pool for future vacancies, ask for their explicit permission and tell them how long their data will be kept.