COMPETENCY BASED INTERVIEWS

Competency-based interviews (also called structured or behavioural interviews) are more systematic, with each question targeting a specific skill or competency. Candidates are asked questions relating to their behaviour in specific circumstances, which they then need to back up with concrete examples. Interviewers will then dig further into the examples, by asking for specific explanations about the candidate's behaviour or skills.

There is a certain knack to answering these questions well and a few rules which we call the STAR Method.

• Situation
• Task
• Action
• Result.

Step 1 – Situation or Task

Describe the situation that you were confronted with or the task that needed to be accomplished. With the STAR approach you need to set the context. Make it concise and informative, concentrating solely on what is useful to the story. For example, if the question is asking you to describe a situation where you had to deal with a difficult person, explain how you came to meet that person and why they were being difficult.

Step 2 – Action

This is the most important section of the STAR approach as it is where you will need to demonstrate and highlight the skills and personal attributes that the question is testing. In other words- you need to explain what YOU did. In doing so, you will need to remember the following:

• Talk about you, not the rest of the team.
• Go into some detail. Do not assume that they will guess what you mean.
• Explain what you did, how you did it, and why you did it.

What you did and how you did it

The interviewers will want to know how you reacted to the situation. This is where you can start selling some important skills. This helps the interviewers understand what drove your actions. It provides much more information about you as an individual.

Step 3 – Result or Outcome

Explain what how it all ended. Also, use the opportunity to describe what you accomplished and what you learnt. This helps you make the answer personal and enables you to highlight further skills.

This is probably the most crucial part of your answer. Interviewers want to know that you are using a variety of generic skills in order to achieve your objectives. Therefore, you must be able to demonstrate in your answer that you are taking specific actions because you are trying to achieve a specific objective and not simply by chance

SUMMARY:

Using STAR- 3 important Rules:

1. Try as far as possible to talk about ‘I’ and ‘me’ rather than ‘we’. The interviewer is interested in hearing what part YOU played- not your whole team.
2. Be precise, stick to the point and talk about a real and actual example.
3. Make sure most of your talking is around the action and that you elaborate on your part. i.e. What you did; what you said; why you did it like that. We don’t want to hear a whole story about what the situation was and only one line about what part you played.

Sample COMPETENCY based Questions

• Describe a situation where you have been able to use persuasion to convince someone to see things your way.
• Give me an example of a time where you have shown initiative and took the lead.
• Tell me about a time where you have had to go above and beyond the call of duty to get a job done.
• Tell me about a time you have had to deal with an unhappy customer
• Describe a time when you had to win someone over, who was reluctant or unresponsive.
• Which recent project or situation has caused you the most stress? How did you deal with it?
• Describe a situation where you had to drive a team through change. How did you achieve this?
• Tell us about a time when someone asked you something that you objected to. How did you handle the situation?
• Tell us about a time when you had to deal with a conflict within your team.
• How do you prepare for an important meeting?
• Give us an example of a situation where your initial approach failed and you had to change tack.
• Tell us about the biggest change that you have had to deal with. How did you cope with it?
• How did you reach the decision that you wanted to change your job?

The key in answering all questions is that you are required to "demonstrate" that you have the right skills by using examples based on your prior experience, and not just talk about the topic in a theoretical and impersonal manner.