competancy based interview

jdooley28

Hi

Anyone have any experience doing a competancy based interview? If so how do they differ from a more traditional interview. Have one for a banking role Wednesday and woulsn't mind some advice!

jimmycrackcorm

It will be questions about how you have handled yourself in previous situations such as: "Have you ever had to deal with a difficult colleague and what did you do about it".

Google examples and prepare yourself to have typical answers based on your own experience.

mikemac1

You need an example for every question

Don't ramble on, you need a point with a beginning, middle and end

Give an example when you lead a team is a common one

Since you are going into banking I'd bet you'll be asked for an example when you saw an error and how you dealt with it
Answer is you escalated it immediately and asked for help. Never ever say you struggled on your own

Yep, go googling for a while and you'll get lots of examples.

jdooley28

Cheers gents!

Katgurl

Basically its situational based questioning as outlined above.

To prepare -

Take out the job description and write down the list of competencies ie. ability to delegate / work under pressure.

Then one-by-one write down an example of how you demonstrated the above within your career. If you are only starting out, use college examples.

A good interviewer will walk you through your answers but what they are basically looking for is the STAR (situation, task, actions, result). ie; "S: when i was working for X bank there was a problem with the internal messaging system, T: I had to identify where the problems lay & provide a solution, A : firstly i investigate the current system... then i implemented.. tested... etc, R : new system got rolled out successfully & feedback was X.

They may ask you for a learning outcome - "if you were faced with same task now what would you do differently" so have a think about this too ie. "i probably would have budgeted for more time within the testing phase" etc.

The preparation for this is time-consuming & tedious but it really is worth it.

Another interview tip - even if the question is not asked in a competency style during an interview, use an example so if yoiu are asked "how do you deal with pressure" Dont say "fine, thanks" Say "Very well I believe. In my previous role, we often faced weekly deadlines..."

I hope this helps.

ssimples09

Its a good idea to have answers prepared for questions like:

1. Give an example of a challenge you had to overcome, how did you achieve this?

2. Give an example of a time you went above and beyond the work required for a given task

3. Give an example of where you worked in a team environment...did any conflict occur.

There are plenty more but its a good place to start!!

Stheno

mikemac1 wrote: »

Since you are going into banking I'd bet you'll be asked for an example when you saw an error and how you dealt with it
Answer is you escalated it immediately and asked for help. Never ever say you struggled on your own

YOu can actually turn a situation where you did struggle into more than "I was competent" here, by acknowledging that you did struggle and learned from it and explain how you apply it.

Shows not only competence, but the ability to learn and apply previous experience

You'll often find in those negative experience questions in competency based interviews that you get asked this, things like "how would you do this differently now" etc.

jdooley28

thanks for all that, I should have a load of examples from previous work, the only problem is trying to think of them on the spot.

redalan

nothing wrong with having a few examples prepared in your head.

good luck

FrPhelimYoung

jdooley28 wrote: »

thanks for all that, I should have a load of examples from previous work, the only problem is trying to think of them on the spot.

Would seriously recommend preparing some examples in advance.
Try this search term in google "behavioural based interview star".

I've been through this process a couple of times and if you prepare say 6/7 examples they can possibly be adapted to many different questions using the STAR technique. It's basically you telling a story about yourself in a work scenario with a beginning, middle & end!

Laneyh

Interviews are a bit like stand-up comedy routines. The trick is to rehearse or prepare material in advance but make it appear spontaneous or at least not totally planned

ssimples09

Interviews are a bit like stand-up comedy routines. The trick is to rehearse or prepare material in advance but make it appear spontaneous or at least not totally planned

I definitely agree, its a lot easier when you have answers prepared beforehand. With the added pressure of an interview setting it can be difficult to think of the best answer on the spot.

redalan

jdooley28 wrote: »

Cheers gents!

How did the interview go?

jdooley28

Firstly anyone who has an interview like this listen to the advice given above people here know what they are talking about and are good enough to help out.

Went okay thanks hoping for the best wouldn't be overly confident but it wasn't a disaster by any means. I probably won't get the position but I think it'll be more to do with experience than the interview.

Slydice

Is it ok to bring in paper with notes on it to interviews like this? To help remember specific examples.

madma

Slydice wrote: »

Is it ok to bring in paper with notes on it to interviews like this? To help remember specific examples.

hahaha are you for real?

Laneyh

Slydice wrote: »

Is it ok to bring in paper with notes on it to interviews like this? To help remember specific examples.

Ehm I wouldn't think that's a good idea you're supposed to be drawing on personal experience.
Unless you've had a really lengthy career they would expect you to be able to come up with strong examples without visual aids.

I once interviewed a guy who brought in a notebook with some questions he wanted to ask so maybe you could do that alright

jdooley28

in fairness i don't think it'd look very good bringing in notes, if you are not making stuff up though a bit of rehersal and you should be fine

Recognition Scene

Slydice wrote: »

Is it ok to bring in paper with notes on it to interviews like this? To help remember specific examples.

Absolutely not.