Competency-Based Interview Questions

Creating Competency-Based Interview Questions

There’s no way around it: competency-based questions can help you distinguish the good applicants from the good ones. But this only works if you prepare yourself with good questions.

Read on to learn more about competency-based interviews, how to use them effectively, and the 26 questions you should ask candidates.

What is a competency-based interview?

A competency-based interview is designed to test more than one set of competencies. It’s a way to ask questions of a candidate you’re considering hiring in a formal, structured way so you get a comprehensive answer that provides deep insight.

Competency-based interviews are also referred to as behavioral, situational or structured interviews. They aim to have candidates cite real-life examples as the basis for their answers and are widely used in many hiring processes.

How are competency-based interviews different from regular interviews?

Competency-based interviews are a special type of structured interview. They are typically more formal than regular or unstructured interviews. However, they are very personal in that they allow the interlocutor to respond in a variety of ways and provide much deeper insights.

Unlike other interviews that aim to get a general feel for a candidate. In a competency-based interview, competencies are used as benchmarks that interviewers and hiring managers use to assess and evaluate candidates.

How are competency-based interview questions typically formulated?

The idea behind competency-based interviews is to help the candidate imagine themselves in a situation where they have demonstrated the skills you are looking for, or imagine how they would address them if they had not done them in the past, and then talk about it.

You can ask questions like: “Give me an example of…”, “Describe how you…”, “Tell me about a time when you…”, “What do you do, if…” or “Describe a time when…”.

When answering these questions, make sure the candidate relates to your industry, the role they will play, the skills you are looking for, and a real-world situation.

Why are they so important for recruiting teams?

Competency-based interviews help interviewers and hiring managers accurately assess applicants and avoid potentially costly bad hires. By asking the same questions, many applicants can be easily compared and answers matched based on predetermined criteria.

They can give interviewers valuable insight into how a person works, their core competencies, their strengths and weaknesses. They can even help predict future behavior.

It’s possible to use competency-based questions very cleverly in interviews, which is why applicants often find it difficult to answer them.

So while the question may seem simple, the way a candidate answers it (especially if they don’t have an immediately relevant answer) also reveals other things, such as: B:

• How they react under pressure
• Their logical processes
• Whether they answer hastily and unprepared or whether they think more carefully about an answer
• Your ability to cross-reference and make a connection even when it’s not obvious.

While candidates can prepare for competency-based interviews, it’s always a good idea to include something particularly relevant to your company that the candidate couldn’t have prepared for. This will show you whether the applicant is able to think independently and can indicate whether they are a good cultural fit for your company.

Examples for this are:

• If we give you a budget of $500 to improve team morale, think of an example of how you could use that money.
• Which of our company’s values appeal to you most? And why?

Although these are not technically competency-based questions, they fit the style and tone of the competency-based approach and allow you to test a person’s attitudes and values.

What is typically asked about in competency-based interviews?

The answer to this question lies in the name of the interview itself: competency-based. In most cases, you cannot directly test whether an employee can complete the task. Therefore, you need to answer questions to learn more about his attitudes, behavior and of course his skills!

Typical competency-based interview questions aim to find out whether someone has skills that are often difficult to assess, even if they have performed well on other assessment tests (such as task-based tests or psychometric tests).

You may want to assess how adaptable the person is, whether they know how to resolve conflicts, how well they work in teams, whether they are resilient, organized, independent, decisive and flexible, and so on. You can also use competency-based interview questions to assess business awareness, conflict and problem-solving skills, and even leadership behavior.

In short, if there is a soft skill that is critical to the job, a good answer to a competency-based interview question says a lot about the candidate.

26 competency-based interview questions for applicants

Subject	Question
Team Leadership	Tell me about a situation in which you unexpectedly had to take on a leadership role.
Management	How do you motivate your team to achieve their goals?
Decision Making	Tell me about a situation where you had to make an important decision at work.
Conflict Resolution	Please give me an example of a workplace conflict situation in which you were involved and explain how you handled it.
See the Big Picture	Describe a situation in which you worked with people from other departments or areas to achieve a positive outcome.
Initiating Change	Tell me about your ability to initiate change and give an example where this led to improvement.
Work Relationships	Give me an example of the type of work relationships you enjoy most and tell me why you like them.
Interpersonal Skills	Describe a situation in which you got people to work together.
Resilience	We’ve all been through a lot lately. Tell me about a situation where you learned to be resilient and how that helped you.
Creativity	Please tell me about a situation where you had to think outside the box.
Flexibility	Please describe a situation in which you had to approach a task differently. What did you do differently and why?
Willingness to learn	Please describe a situation in which you made a mistake and learned from it.
Teamwork	Describe a situation in which you made a positive contribution to your team.
Communication	Please provide an example of how you communicated bad or difficult news to your colleagues or team.
Trustworthiness	Please describe a situation in which you were able to demonstrate your trustworthiness.
Persuasiveness	Tell me about a situation in which you effectively used your communication skills to achieve a successful outcome.
Responsibility	Think of a situation in which you took responsibility. Please tell me about it.
Planning and Organizing	Describe a situation in which you effectively used your organizational skills to complete an important task.
Prioritization	Consider a situation where you had to consider conflicting workloads when planning a task or project. What have you done?
Taking Initiative	Describe a situation in which you had to use your initiative to complete a complex task.
Commercial Awareness	Give me an example where you showed how you saved the company money or improved processes.
Customer Focus	Can you think of a time when you adjusted the way you completed a task or helped a customer achieve a better result? Tell me about it.
Delivering Results	Please give an example where you achieved something extraordinary.
Technical Skills	How have you best used your technical skills? Describe a scenario that explains this.
Analytical Skills	How do you approach problems at work?
Professional Development	Tell me about a time when you focused on your professional development and what came out of it.