I then brought up competency-based questioning and asked if anyone was familiar this. Since it’s been reported that more sophisticated companies today are using this method I thought it was a prudent topic for discussion.  No one had anything to say about it except, “what now?”  As if to say, isn’t behavioral enough of a potential trap?

I have to admit, I’m not an expert on Competency-Based Interviewing per se.  But I’ve read Robin Kessler’s book, “Competency-Based Interviews.”  And it’s a good one. But it’s not say that her explanation is that easy to follow.

At the group meeting last night, the ultimate killer question came up.  ”Can you give us an example of a competency-based question.” I couldn’t.  But I told them I would write this post and give examples today.

First it’s important to define what competency means.

Paul Green in his book Building Robust Competencies, defines an  individual competency as a “written description of measurable work habits and personal skills used to achieve a work objective.” Or put another way, Competencies are the basic functional and behavioral requirements to successfully perform on the job. And individual’s competencies are key character traits that the most successful achievers have that help them to be such high achievers.

We have all heard of core competencies, those useful bullets on a resume like loyalty, honesty, reliability, integrity,  the inner core of a persons habits. But take competencies further – functional competencies. These competencies  are the “technical” needs of a job or profession. For example, a functional competency for a IT Administrator might be knowledge of database design and networking solutions, while a functional competency for a HR Manager might be knowledge of Federal and Local hiring regulations.

Individual competencies are the skills, traits, and characteristics that hiring managers identify in the best performers.

So, in giving examples of competency-based questions, in very elementary fashion, I’ll say it’s the  skills, traits and characteristics of a person blended into the fold of a behavioral business situation.

Here goes 3 examples:

1. Explain to us a situation where you had multiple challenging projects with different time priorities to manage. How did you handle it?
2. Tell us about a time when you were instructed to do something you considered unethical. What was the situation and how did you handle it?
3. Describe to us how you helped overcome a department HR problem and what were the end results.

See, how the focus of these questions centers on a specific challenge and questions how you used your problem solving, analytical thinking, or principled values to take action and move the challenge to a successful conclusion?

Suggestion… study up on competencies and the competency-based interviewing groundswell. I’ts not hard if you’re ready for these types of questions.

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