What Are Competence Based Interviews?

Competency-based interviews are predetermined types of interviews that employers use to determine the abilities, knowledge, and behavioral traits of candidates for a given role. Thus, performance-related questions in Competence-based interviews focus on skills that can be applied on the job instead of demanding job seekers to reflect on hypothetical situations or each interviewer’s generic questions.

By way of the competency-based interview, the candidates are asked questions concerning what they have done until now, and illustrations of real-life situations where they have used a certain skill or behaviour are provided.

Competency-based, relying on candidates’ communication, problem-solving, collaboration, leadership, flexibility, and role-relevant technical skills, assesses their abilities. From the interviewer's standpoint, the candidate's problem-solving capability, qualities important to their organizational fit, and abilities to deal with particular problems could be effectively evaluated by asking how the candidate handled these previous experiences.

Why Is Important Competency Based Interview

From the employers' point of view, structured and objective competency-based interviews are advantageous since such types of interviews can measure how well the potential employee will fit the position. The interviews of these kinds help firms to detect applicants' talents and suitableness by spotting the attributes that are job-related like; problem-solving and communication. It makes the hiring process biased and subjective by gathering candidates' prior experiences, mistakes, successes, and habits. Competent-based interviews shorten the recruiting mechanism and lift the company to higher productivity.

Example of Competency Based Interviews

An interview for the job description of a competency-based customer service specialist is likely to get the candidate to describe an issue with a client they handled before their time in the industry. Response to such questions might be about the solution, communication with the customers, and results.

The candidate could retell us a case of a customer who had billing problems. Next, the applicant would talk about listening and how she/he paid attention to the client's issues without judging them. Also, it would describe how she/he felt while empathizing with the client's dissatisfaction. They can be very articulate in the way they inform the public and calm them. The interviewee could be able to highlight their resolve problem-solving skills and customer-centered mindset in resolving the issue quickly and peacefully be the judge advocate that the client was left pleased and loyal to the firm.