View advice on how to prepare for a competency based interview.
What are Competency Based Interviews?
Competency based interviews allow candidates to demonstrate certain behaviours or skills. Within the interview you will be asked to provide examples of situations which resulted in you taking a particular action.
Before Your Competency Based Interview.
Before attending a competency based interview you should research what competencies the company are looking for. The best way to do this is from identifying the skills required or desirable from the job specification.
Examples of competencies that the company could be looking for include:
– Self Motivation
– Teamwork and Relationship Building
– Planning and Organisation
– Communication
– Influence and Assertiveness
How to Answer Competency Based Questions.
When answering the questions you should follow the STAR structure, and then conclude with what you learnt. STAR stands for Situation, Task, Action, Results. When using the STAR technique, make sure you focus on you, not what the team did.
Be prepared to provide examples of when things didn’t go as planned. What did you do? What did you learn? Use examples from both your personal life and work experiences.
Additional Competency Based Interview Tips.
Avoid making vague or theoretical statements such as “I would do…” that provide no information about what you did. When you can, quantify your results. Numbers illustrate your level of authority and success.
