Anyone involved in recruitment interviews will likely have used competency-based interview questions without realising it. These questions are a surefire way to get to know the candidate’s skills and how they could use them in the new role you are recruiting for. In this article, we take a deep dive into why competency-based interview questions are beneficial for recruiting the best talent and give you some examples to use when preparing for your next round of hiring.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- What are Competency-based Interview Questions?
- How to Write Competency-based Interview Questions
- How are Candidates Expected to Answer Competency-based Interview Questions?
- Examples of Competency-based Interview Questions
- Finding the Best Talent
- Check out Factorial’s ATS to streamline your Recruitment process 🚀
What are Competency-based Interview Questions?
Competency-based interview questions focus on a specific skill and ask the candidate to provide real-life examples of when they used the skill and what the outcome was.
Competency-based interviews allow hiring managers to understand how a candidate will perform within the organisation and whether they match the company culture. They remove the focus from qualifications and industry experience and allow applicants to demonstrate their transferable skills.
Some of the competencies an employer may be looking for include:
- Effective communication
- Time management and organisational skills
- Teamwork
- Leadership
- Problem-solving
- Conflict resolution
- Flexibility and adaptability
- Commercial awareness
- Resilience
What are the Benefits of Using Competency-Based Interview Questions?
Companies who use competency-based interview questions believe these interview questions get the best results in recruitment for the following reasons:
- They provide a good predictor of future performance by asking candidates to draw on previous experience to demonstrate their appropriate skills for the role.
- Ensures that the interview focuses on the specific skills required to perform the role to a high standard and provides an evidence-based assessment approach to recruitment.
- Encourages the candidate to provide detailed, structured responses that showcase their abilities, providing a deeper understanding of their experience and capabilities and reducing the chance of receiving generic, vague answers.
- These questions reduce the chance of bias or subjective impressions impacting how the interviewer responds to the answers and promote a more transparent and fair approach to recruitment. This framework compares answers and helps create a level playing field when graders evaluate candidates.
- It improves decision-making because it is easier for interviewers to compare their notes and make decisions based on the evidence rather than their gut feelings.
- Asking candidates to share specific examples of when they have demonstrated a skill helps reveal their core values, which is essential for determining whether they will be a cultural fit.
How to Write Competency-based Interview Questions
When writing competency-based interview questions, the best place to start is with the key skills you are looking for in the role. These skills might be divided into those that are essential and those that are desirable for the role. They can also be divided into hard skills, such as specific technical skills, and soft skills, such as conflict resolution, leadership, and interpersonal skills.
Once you have the list of skills you seek, you can formulate a question asking the candidate to demonstrate when they used that skill. For example, if you want to understand if someone has conflict resolution skills, a competency-based interview question might be, ‘Can you give an example of a time when you had a conflict with a colleague? Tell us how you handled the situation and what the outcome was.’
How Are Candidates Expected to Answer Competency-based Interview Questions?
A common approach to answering competency-based interview questions is to use the STAR approach:
- S: Explain the situation, the background and context to the scenario when the skills where used
- T: Explain what the task was that required the skills to be used.
- A: What action did they take to fulfill the task or resolve the situation?
- R: What was the result and impact of their response?
Examples of Competency-based Interview Questions
Here are some examples of competency-based interview questions to assess specific skills:
Effective communication
- How do you maintain good working relationships with your colleagues? Give us two examples of establishing working relationships with different colleagues.
Time management and organisational skills
- Tell us how you manage your time to ensure you meet your goals. How do you prioritise? How do you organise your workload and ensure you meet deadlines?
Teamwork
- Tell me about a time you were part of a team that worked together to achieve a successful outcome. What was your role in the team, and how did you contribute to the project’s success?
Leadership
- Can you give an example where you have demonstrated leadership skills? Do you have examples of how you have demonstrated inclusive leadership?
Problem-solving
- Can you give an example of a time you took a creative approach to your work or a problem that needed solving? Explain the process you used and the outcome.
Conflict resolution
- Tell us about a time you were part of a conflict that got resolved. What was your contribution?
Flexibility and adaptability
- Describe a situation where you were asked to do something new. How did you respond, and what was the outcome?
Commercial awareness
- Can you give us an example of when you have used your commercial awareness to impact a project?
Resilience
- How do you work when you are under pressure? Tell us about a difficult situation that you had to navigate and the steps you took to get through it.
Finding The Best Talent
If you are recruiting, here at Factorial, we have an applicant tracking software (ATS) which can help you find the best talent for your business. Our ATS will centralise candidate information, track their progress through the pipeline and support effective communication between recruiters and applicants. Our ATS software is particularly helpful when it comes to the interview process. It allows you to use ready-made templates or create your own customise questions for your candidates. Which makes Factorial’s ATS perfect for employers wanting to use competency-based interview questions to find their perfect match. Lastly, Factorial also ensures you are legally compliant with hiring laws and uses analytics to provide insights to save time and help make informed decisions throughout your recruitment process.
