Employers’ Quick Guide to Competency Based Interviews
What is a competency based interview?
- Competency based interviews use behavioural interview techniques to get evidence of skills, experience and personal qualities, known collectively as competencies. This is sometimes also called structured interviewing.
- Competency based interviews give information about a person’s past behaviour and experience so recruiters can effectively score and compare candidates. This type of interview helps recruiters make hiring decisions based on evidence rather than gut feeling.
What are competencies?
Competencies are the skills, abilities or behaviours required for a job. Every job can be described in terms of competencies. Some will be regarded as essential and others desirable. Competencies can be categorised as:
- Managerial competencies
- Individual competencies
- Analytical competencies
- Interpersonal competencies
- Motivational competencies
The 12 most common competencies are:
- Communication
- Achievement
- Customer focus
- Teamwork
- Leadership
- Planning and organising
- Operational awareness
- Flexibility
- Developing others
- Problem solving
- Analytical thinking
- Building relationships
What is a competency based interview question?
Typically, competency based questions kick off with phrases such as:
- Tell me about a time when…?
- Describe a situation…?
- What would you do if…?
Interviewers should follow the initial answer with deeper probing. By investigating further, the interviewer should aim to discover more about the candidate’s skills as well as clues which may suggest they are exaggerating their part in the process.
Supplementary questions include:
- How exactly did you do that?
- Tell me exactly what steps you took to resolve that?
- What was the basis for that decision?
How do you prepare for a competency based interview?
First make a list of the competencies required to succeed in the role. Then score each competency out of five. One indicates the candidate did not provide evidence for this competency. Five demonstrates the candidate gave highly satisfactory evidence of high levels of this skill, experience or quality.
What are the most useful competency based interview questions when recruiting senior accountants?
The most useful questions for senior level finance people typically cover four areas (though that is not to say you should not use other questions):
- Leadership
- Teamwork
- Problem solving and analysis
- Initiative
Leadership questions probe a candidate’s interpersonal styles and the methods they use to help individuals or groups achieve tasks.
Useful questions include:
- How frequently do you meet with your immediate subordinates as a group? Why? What do you do to prepare for these meeting? What do you do at and afterwards?
- How often do you have meetings with peers? What role did you play at the last meeting?
- Tell me about a recently implemented and radical new policy or idea. How did you encourage colleagues to go along with this change?
- Have you ever had a problem getting subordinates to accept your ideas or goals? What approach did you use to resolve this? How effective was it?
- Tell me about a task or project with which you have been involved. What was your role and what did you do?
- Do you have any subordinates with performance problems? What have you done to get them to correct the problems?
- What specifically do you do to set an example for subordinates?
- What sort of leader do colleagues feel you are? How do you know? Are you satisfied with your leadership style? What have you done to change or improve it?
- Describe some situations where you have not followed the chain of command. Explain why you took the approach you did.
Teamwork questions highlight how the candidate participates as a team member when not the leader and how they contribute to team effort.
Useful questions include:
- What have you done to build good working relationships with others?
- Do you ever accommodate to awkward people to get the job done?
- When working on group tasks, how do you ensure everyone's ideas are heard?
- Tell me about a time when you have resolved conflict in a group.
- Tell me about a time when you participated as a group member rather than a leader. What did you actually do?
Problem solving and analysis questions highlight the candidate’s effectiveness in identifying problems, securing relevant information, relating data from different sources and identifying possible problems.
Useful questions include:
- What problems are you currently working on that came as a surprise? How much notice did you have of the problems?
- How do you keep up with problems and issues in your organisation? What information do you use?
- Describe the biggest problem you have had this year. How did you handle it? What did you do after identifying the problem?
- When have you involved subordinates in problem solving? Why?
- What range of information do you routinely access?
Initiative questions highlight whether the candidate actively influences or passively accepts events. They also demonstrate the candidate’s ability to see opportunities and act on them, specifically their ability to instigate action.
Useful questions include:
- What have you done to make your job easier or more rewarding? What projects have you started on your own this year?
- Tell me about one of those projects. What did you do?
- How did you go about getting your last job?
- How do you put forward your ideas?
- What has been your biggest achievement? How did you achieve it?
What to look for in answers
Answers should be relevant to the question, reflect real experience and have sufficient detail. An ideal answer will be very specific and tell a story.
A model answer should:
- Explain the candidate’s role in identifying a problem
- Set out the problem
- Justify the action taken
- Highlight the candidate’s role in resolving the problem
- Describe the benefit to the company
How should a competency based interview be conducted?
A list of questions, or themes, should be drawn up to tease out the situation or event that provides evidence of the required competency. You then need a list of questions or themes that probe the candidate’s answers and encourage them to go into more relevant detail. By drawing out more detail, this so-called ‘laddering’ technique provides the evidence to compare candidates.
Laddering questions include:
- How exactly did you do that?
- Tell me exactly what steps you took to resolve that?
- What was the basis for that decision?
Scoring candidates against competencies requires objectivity and it is preferable to have two interviewers. Both interviewers score independently and these scores can be compared at the end. To benchmark candidates, scores are calculated as a percentage of the total possible score.
For professional tailored support to help you find the next financial leaders for your business contact Nigel Jeyes or Alex Gregory at Grafton Banks Finance on 01273 229499.
