Competency based Interviews (Just hate them)

DKLS

Don't worry its just another HR fad, they love to make people jump though hoops and the STAR technique is in a long line of fads.

Give it a couple of years and no doubt there will be the latest fad which you will have to learn how to jump through.

InsideInsurance

Stylehutz wrote: »

Thanks for replies. I obviously will have to work on it. Thing is as I say I don't interview well and I have got this book on 100 competency interview questions but the examples of answers are not compatable to the experience I have.


I get the impression that this type of interview is more suited to people with managerial experience who have come across the many scenarios.


AT each of the 3 interviews, I have been asked different questions on all occasions. The problem is I struggle to come up with any examples and Next time I am going to stress to them at the end of interview that I don't perform well at this sort of interview and hope they take that into account when selecting the successful candidate. It appears as this type of questioning is preferred but to me it is employers using a tick box system instead of judging you on your real experience.

There is a host of possible things in play here, unfortunately HR/ Recruitment suffers fairly heavily with trends mainly created by senior management or consultants reading theory papers coming out of elite academic institutes and trying to put them to a practical use.

One of my very first projects involved changing the call centre recruitment processes to "recruit for attitude" which basically changed recruitment from a manager lead process to a scorecard with predefined questions and scores. The theory being that staff turnover is very costly to the company and so actually only hiring people who are highly motivated/ looking for promotion types is actually a really bad idea because they'll all leave when they realise they'll be lucky to make team leader in 5 years let alone area manager that they say at interview.

If you say to the average person that a company doesnt want motivated people but people who are happy with a dull 9-5 job with no real prospects many people will look at you funny.


Going back to competency based questions - there are a bunch of very standard ones (eg give an example when you've had conflicting priorities), there are a bunch that are relevant to particular careers and there are ones that are specific to the role in question.

You should use books/ online resources to get your list of questions but then write your own replies to them. When you see the job advert you may be able to take a reasonable guess of which areas they are going to pick on, particularly if you look at the required skills section and look at anything thats not generic.

So for example the last time I was recruiting for an Analyst we asked for experience of data consolidation from legacy systems so I'd expect anyone worth their salt to be expect questions about what particular challenges there are in this field.

asajj

Couple of topics with helpful advise

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5146888

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5151765

Stylehutz

pinpin wrote: »

we could use this thread and formulate a huge database of common questions, and then a good, short, pretend answer for each question that we can all use in interviews!??

That's a great idea but the thing is I have a book with 100 of these but the answers to the questions seem to be for the benefit of people who have held Junior managerial roles just as most competency based questions I have been asked.

Stylehutz

asajj wrote: »

Couple of topics with helpful advise

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5146888

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5151765

Taken from your post this is a set of 12 easier based competency questions. Mine were harder than that.


1. Tell me about how you worked effectively under pressure.

2. How do you handle a challenge? Give an example.

3. Have you ever made a mistake? How did you handle it?

4. Give an example of a goal you reached and tell me how you achieved it.

5. Describe a decision you made that wasn't popular and how you handled implementing it.

6. Give an example of how you set goals and achieve them.

7. Give an example of how you worked on team.
8
. What do you do if you disagree with someone at work?

9. Share an example of how you were able to motivate employees or co-workers.

10. Have you handled a difficult situation? How?

11 When you worked on multiple projects how did you prioritize?

12 Give an example of a goal you didn’t meet and how you handled it.



If I was asked these off the top of my head at the next interview I would be able to answer only 1,2,3 7 and 11, the rest I would be struggling on

custardy

Tip i got from one interviewer.
make up cards with examples for generic questions as Stylehutz has posted.
Take these into interview with you and choose the best one for your answer that fits closest.

goldsounds

I have three competencies based interviews coming up this week.
One with Civil Service and two with a private company.
I follow the STAR method to answer each question.

pinpin

Stylehutz wrote: »

Taken from your post this is a set of 12 easier based competency questions. Mine were harder than that.

Really? Jeez. I can hardly answer any of the 'easy' 12 you quoted!
What job was it you went for? I'm assuming it a professional role where a degree is a pre-requisite?

Just for a laugh, why don't you write down some of the questions you were asked so that I can laugh at myself trying to imagine what on earth i'd say in the interview! lol

custardy

pinpin wrote: »

Really? Jeez. I can hard'y answer any of the 'easy' 12 you quoted!
What job was it you went for? I'm assuming it a professional role where a degree is a pre-requisite?

Just for a laugh, why don't you write down some of the questions so that I can laugh at myself trying to imagine what on earth i'd say in the interview! lol

Those are pretty basic ones TBH. I wouldn't see those as anything but for lower end jobs. I sat an internal one myself for a middle management role and they were more in depth.

pinpin

custardy wrote: »

Those are pretty basic ones TBH. I wouldn't see those as anything but for lower end jobs. I sat an internal one myself for a middle management role and they were more in depth.

Really? I can answer maybe 2 of those questions.
I think these types of interviews are only aimed at graduates going for high-flying extremely well-paid jobs or people who are already managers etc.
I don't know why they are seeping through into interviews for people looking for cleaning work!