Competency-based interview questions

What a competency-based interview is

In a competency-based interview, the questions are not chosen conversationally. Each one targets a defined capability, and your answer is marked against written criteria for that capability.

The model is most visible in UK public sector recruitment. The Civil Service runs a framework it calls Success Profiles, which assesses candidates across five elements: behaviours, strengths, ability, experience and technical. Behaviours are defined as “the actions and activities that people do which result in effective performance in a job”, and that element is the one most people mean by a competency question. Not every element applies to every job: the framework notes that the elements “vary depending on the profession, level and type of role”.

The same approach, under names like competency framework, capability framework or key selection criteria, is used by police forces, the NHS, local government, large charities, graduate schemes and professional services firms. International organisations run it too. If an advert lists six to eight capitalised qualities and asks you to address each one, you are looking at a competency process.

One consequence matters more than any technique: the interview is comparative and additive. Panels score each competency separately and add up, so a brilliant answer on one competency cannot rescue an empty answer on another. Coverage beats polish.

Find the framework before you prepare

The competencies are rarely a secret. They are in the advert, the person specification, the application form headings, or the employer’s published framework, and reading them is the single highest-value hour of preparation.

The Civil Service list is a good example of what you will find, because it names nine behaviours and defines each one. Seeing the big picture is about understanding “how your role fits with and supports organisational objectives”. Changing and improving is about seeking “out opportunities to create effective change”. Making effective decisions is using “evidence and knowledge to support accurate, expert decisions and advice”. Leadership, in that framework, is defined in terms of showing “pride and passion for public service”. Working together covers forming “effective partnerships and relationships with people both internally and externally”. The others are developing self and others, managing a quality service, delivering at pace, and communicating and influencing, which is described as communicating “purpose and direction with clarity, integrity and enthusiasm”.

Two details from the published guidance are worth borrowing even if you are not applying to government. The expectations are graded: behaviours are “specific to the grade level of the job role”, with separate example sets for junior and senior grades, and the guidance adds that you are not required to demonstrate every bullet point to succeed. So pitch your examples at the level of the job, and do not panic about covering a framework exhaustively.

Where the employer publishes definitions, use their words in your answer. A panel marking against a sheet finds it easier to score an answer that speaks its own language.

How answers are scored, and what that changes

Each competency normally gets its own question, its own score, and a few minutes of your time. Within that window the marker is looking for evidence, not for opinion: something that happened, with your actions and an outcome in it.

This is why the first person matters so much here. “We redesigned the intake process” generates no evidence for you. “I mapped the three steps where cases stalled, proposed dropping one form, and ran it past the two team leads” is scoreable. Panels will often say “tell me what you did” more than once; treat it as a hint rather than hostility.

Time management is part of the exercise. With eight competencies in an hour, a nine-minute first answer guarantees a rushed finish, and rushed answers are where coverage gets lost. Two to three minutes per competency is the usual target.

Expect probing. Competency interviewers are trained to dig: what was your specific role, why did you choose that, who disagreed, what would you do differently, how did you know it worked. That is not scepticism about your story, it is how the evidence gets confirmed, and it is the reason a borrowed or exaggerated example is a bad bet. Have the detail behind each example ready, including the parts that did not go well.

Build an evidence bank, one example per competency

Preparation is a mapping job, not a writing job. List the competencies in one column. Then go through the last two or three years of work, study or volunteering and list the eight to ten things you are willing to talk about in detail. Now match them.

You will usually find two or three competencies with no example and one example that could serve four competencies. Fix the gaps first, because those are the scores you will lose. And where one example covers several competencies, decide in advance which competency you will use it for, then find something else for the rest. Reusing the same story all afternoon is the most common complaint panels make about candidates.

Use STAR to shape each example. The National Careers Service describes the four parts as the situation you had to deal with, the task you were given, the action you took, and “what happened as a result of your action and what you learned”. Its practical tips apply directly to competency interviews: draw examples from different areas of your life, keep answers brief, avoid sounding rehearsed, and be ready for follow-up questions on whatever you raise.

Write each example as four or five lines, not as a paragraph to memorise. Memorised answers fail the follow-up, which is where the marks are confirmed. Many candidates look for a PDF of model competency answers; the list of competencies plus your own history is a better document than any of them, because the panel is scoring your evidence rather than the phrasing.

Sample competency answers

Each answer below targets one named competency and runs to about two minutes spoken.

Delivering at pace

Situation: Our team had six weeks to move a grants process online before the funding round opened, and the previous attempt had been abandoned.

Task: I was responsible for the application form and for the guidance applicants would read.

Action: I started by cutting scope: I compared the old form with the assessment criteria and found eleven of the thirty-four fields were never used in scoring, so I proposed dropping them and got that agreed in the first week. I set a weekly cut-off for changes, and when our designer went on leave I built the guidance pages myself from the existing template rather than waiting.

Result: The form opened on the published date with the shorter field set. Average completion time dropped by about a third against the old form, measured on the first hundred applications, and no applicant queries were raised about the removed fields.

Working together

Situation: A service review needed input from two teams that had stopped attending each other’s meetings after a disagreement about workload.

Task: I was the analyst gathering the evidence, so I needed both teams to give me data and to accept the findings afterwards.

Action: I met each team separately first and asked what they wanted the review to answer, which gave me two different questions rather than one dispute. I wrote the terms of reference to include both, sent them to each team for comment before anyone met, and ran the joint session on the data rather than on the history.

Result: Both teams signed off the findings. One of the recommendations was theirs rather than mine, and the two teams resumed a shared monthly meeting that was still running when I left.

Strength-based and mixed interviews

Many employers who used pure competency interviews have added a strength-based element, and the two feel completely different in the room.

A strength, in the Civil Service definition, is “the things that we do regularly, do well and that motivate us”. Strength questions therefore sound like “what do you enjoy most about your work?”, “what comes naturally to you?” or “what sort of task makes a good day?” They come faster, there are more of them, and they are shorter.

The published guidance is unusually direct about preparation: “there are no right or wrong answers to these questions”, and candidates are advised not to rehearse their answers because assessors are “looking for your initial response”. The useful preparation is reflection rather than scripting, specifically thinking through what your personal strengths actually are and where they show up.

In a mixed interview, read the question type from the tense and the subject. Past tense and a scenario means competency: give the example. Present tense and a preference means strength: answer quickly and honestly, with one small concrete illustration. Trying to force a two-minute STAR answer onto a strength question is the most common mistake in mixed formats, and it slows the whole interview down.

Ability tests, technical questions and experience checks may sit alongside both, since the framework treats them as separate elements. Prepare them separately too.

Where candidates lose the marks

Using one example for everything. It is the fastest way to end an interview with four competencies scored and four empty.

Describing the team instead of yourself. If a panel cannot separate your contribution from your colleagues’, there is nothing to award.

No result. Competency markers want the outcome, and ideally a measure of it. An honest small number beats a vague claim, and a mixed result with what you learned is perfectly acceptable evidence.

Answering the competency you prepared rather than the one you were asked. The question wording names the capability, usually in the employer’s own vocabulary; listen for it and answer that.

Running over time. Long answers crowd out the later competencies, and panels rarely extend the slot.

And memorising text. A rehearsed answer sounds rehearsed and collapses on the second follow-up. Learn your examples as four or five facts you can tell in any order, then let the panel lead you through them.