Competency-based interviewing

I just spotted a post by Soul Seared Dreamer about an interview that he had recently, and I immediately recognised the interviewing technique that he was subjected to. Several readers have sent me emails about jobs and banking careers over the last few weeks, so I thought I'd do a quick post about this technique because it's seems to be quite popular at the moment. As part of my management training a few years ago I was taught how to conduct this sort of interview.

The idea is that the interviewer wants to test certain 'competences', which are defined behavioural skills such as 'team working', 'communication skills', 'problem solving', etc. The theory is that when applied properly, two separate interviewers will reach the same conclusion about whether a candidate possesses each competence.

Each question is designed to test a single competence in something. In a half-hour interview, one can probably only test 3 or at most 4 competences, because each competence takes quite a while to establish. The questions typically ask the candidate to describe things that they've done, or things that have happened to them in the past, and there are likely to be follow-up questions about the situation that the candidate ends up describing.

For example, an interviewer might ask "Can you give an example of a situation where you solved a problem in a creative way?" Once you've answered the question, the follow-up questions might be "What did you do next?", "What was the end result?", "What did you learn from that?" etc.

If anyone finds themselves in a competency-based interview, if you can guess what the competency that's being assessed then so much the better. However, I reckon the golden rule is don't make anything up, because the follow-up questions will almost certainly catch you out. Telling the interviewer that you recognise the technique might help break the ice and make you feel more relaxed, and also might establish a good impression that you're not clueless about what's going on. However, it won't help you prove your competences, so don't think that it helps you get out of it!

In Soul Seared Deamers's case it seems that he's through the next interview stage :-). My best guess is that the second interview, which will apparently be with the first interviewers' boss, won't be a competency-based interview. It probably means that the candidates being interviewed at the second stage have all shown that they've got the competences required to do the job, and it's now simply up to the boss to decide who he likes best. The very best of luck to him :-).

Anyway, that's all I can remember. A quick google search seems to bring up lots of matches so if anyone's interested there's probably a lot to read!