Candidates often complain that during a job interview they are asked questions that are out of touch with reality. Bosses - that candidates are not properly tested. Competency interview is an example of a technique that addresses these ills. What is it about?
What is a competency interview?
The competency interview consists in examining the employee's competences that are useful in a given position. It is also called a behavioral interview. The recruiter gives a grade based on the candidate's answers that relate to past situations. Asking questions about specific behaviors and examples of situations it allows you to learn, apart from the hard competences, also the soft ones, and often it is them that determines the efficient functioning of the employee on a daily basis. The recruiter can immediately verify what he has read in the candidate's CV by asking him or her about specific examples of selected attitudes. Questions specific to the competency interview may also be useful during the application process. Then the recruiter learns something about the candidate beyond what he can read on the official CV. This gives him a starting point useful during the recruitment interview and allows for the initial verification of the most important features.
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How to properly and effectively conduct a competence interview?
The London School of Economics and Political Science guide advises that the competency interview should consist of 70 percent. with questions related to character traits and in 30 percent. with skill-related questions. In other words, most of the questions should be on competences and a minority on technical skills. To choose the questions well, they should be embedded in the values that are really important from the point of view of the company. This is the biggest secret of a good competence intelligence.
It is very easy to collect sample questions from the internet and ask the candidate. It is more difficult to compose a set that will actually say something more about key competences from the point of view of a given workplace. When asking questions, it is worth taking into account not only the specificity of the position, but also the employee team, as well as the atmosphere in the company and its goals. Refer to the company's mission, goals, and communication strategy when in doubt. Then based on them select the features you are looking for. By default, it is about 3-8 key competences that are worth checking during the interview. Additionally, it is worth creating a scoring system that allows you to categorize candidates' responses according to a template.
For example, if you are looking for a candidate who communicates well with others, you can create a score where:
- 1-3 points - the candidate can communicate effectively in writing and in speech
- 4-6 points - the candidate expresses himself clearly and concisely, and others understand him well
- 7-9 - the candidate can communicate even complex problems or issues in a simple and interesting way.
If you have such a classification for each of the characteristics, it will be much easier for you to recruit and conduct a competency interview. When the candidate answers a question, you don't have to "eye" judge the answer. You can give a grade that will act as a benchmark for future recruiting decision makers. What's more, you can approach the recruitment process with a set of clear expectations. For example, you can specify that for a candidate for a junior position, you expect skills of a minimum of 3, for a candidate for a senior position - at level 5, and people on the board must have even higher competencies. In this way, you collect information during the recruitment process, which will later be useful to you when planning promotions or training. You can do better with a breakdown of the level of individual competencies for all employees at your fingertips plan internal communication whether to create integration trips that will develop the most important features.
Avoid this during the interview
Identifying the key characteristics and symptoms of these competencies becomes easier with experience. At the beginning, it is more difficult to create standards around competency intelligence and one should rather rely on universal patterns. Give the recruiter some degree of freedom when creating question examples. for example, assign two choice questions to each competency. In this way, the interview will have a more flexible formula, and the candidate will not have the feeling that every interview looks the same.
The way you conduct a competency interview also contributes to employer branding. Candidates will repeat what happened to them during the interview and compare the practices and communication strategy with those known from other companies. This therefore, job interviews aim at standardization, and the process should be supervised by an experienced HR department. Below you will find examples from the competency interview that will allow you to realistically assess your key skills.
Competency interview - examples of questions
Theoretically, it may seem that preparing questions for a competency interview is a tedious task. In practice, however, ready-made patterns can be used. Most positions are not unique, and other companies have recruited them before. Also, in many places similar character traits come in handy, so questions can be duplicated as well. Below are examples of competency interviews that you should know:
- Describe a past situation where you had to show…. (Creativity, leadership, initiative, cold blood, etc.)
- Describe when was the last time you led a group at work?
- Give an example of a workplace conflict that you have resolved
- How have you had good relations with your colleagues so far?
- What is your greatest achievement in life?
- Describe the letter you wrote to the client and what was his reaction?
- Describe a difficult telephone conversation with a customer. What was the hardest part about it? What would you do differently next time?
- Give an example of an important decision that you had to make on your own at work.
If you also need other examples of questions that you can ask during a competency interview, or you care on the audit and creating company standards from scratch, contact us!