Need some help on competency based interview questions

Fuzzy_Duck

Hi all, bit of a long shot but I have an interview coming up next week for an admin job based on the following competencies:

Driving Organisational Success
People Management
Interpersonal Skills

I know Interpersonal Skills will most likely be about how I interact with colleagues, but I'm stumped on the other two. People Management suggests it's more directed at people who would be managing others, which I wouldn't be doing. Driving Organisational Success is a bit vague in my mind- is it just a chance to talk about my past achievements and how I have benefitted my employer?

Thanks in advance for any help- it's been a long time since I had an interview and I'm very nervous!!

NMSE12

I'm in the same boat having not had an interveiw for 7rs and one coming up next week for a job i really want!!
I would just think of times when you have had to manage your time, resources and allocated jobs to people in the past whether in a work position or in a personal setting.
Know how you feel though after looking at the personal spec for job i'm hoping to get i had to use a dictionay to decipher what it was looking for, wish they would just make it easier to understand!

NMSE12

Just tto add
Good Luck :-)

KiKi

Driving Organisational Success will be something around how you perform and deliver results. So perhaps questions like "tell me about a time when you've overcome obstacles to deliver an objective" or "can you describe a time when you have taken responsibility for seeing a project through to the end."

People management is typically about managing others, so delegation, giving feedback, resolving a problem to others etc. If you're not managing people, perhaps they have questions around colleagues, such as giving feedback, or dealing with a difficult colleague, or how you have worked to resolve issues in teams you've been in.

HTH
KiKi

dehydrato

have a few suggestions, will pop back later but always use the STAR format when answering this type of interview question, it ensures you cover all the points -

S- Situation - What was happening, why was this not the best way to work etc
T - Task - What needed to be changed, who would be involved, what obstacles may there be?
A- Action - What actions did YOU take, hopw did you influence others, what obstacles did you face, how did you overcome them?
R - Result - What was the outcome, how is it different from the original situation, what business benefit has been shown, who else has adopted this way to work, what recpgnition did you get. If not a complete sucess, what was learnt. How will you keep this moving forwards.

ERICS_MUM

Driving Organisational Success - you need to know what the organisation's targets and "missions" are and how they aim to achieve them, so that you can work towards them in your own area of the business. It's quite common nowadays for the big targets to be broken down into mini-targets at section or dept level and also for individuals.

Good luck !

teeb

dehydrato wrote: »

have a few suggestions, will pop back later but always use the STAR format when answering this type of interview question, it ensures you cover all the points -

S- Situation - What was happening, why was this not the best way to work etc
T - Task - What needed to be changed, who would be involved, what obstacles may there be?
A- Action - What actions did YOU take, hopw did you influence others, what obstacles did you face, how did you overcome them?
R - Result - What was the outcome, how is it different from the original situation, what business benefit has been shown, who else has adopted this way to work, what recpgnition did you get. If not a complete sucess, what was learnt. How will you keep this moving forwards.

As well as the STAR approach, which has been handy for me in the past, try and think about the question being asked, and what skills the employer wants to hear about.

If the question is "Tell us about a time when you have had to use interpersonal skills" then they want to hear about communication, listening, reasoning and so on, so try and include all of these. Don't waste 10 minutes talking about a skill (for example time management) that isn't relevant to the question.

Fuzzy_Duck

Thanks all, this is all great advice! I have a much better idea of what I might need to say now

Jonathanus

Thank you for sharing information