The Ultimate Guide on
How to Prepare for a
Competency-Based Interview
By Rhys Williams Recruitment Trouble Shooter and M.D. of Sigma Recruitment
Finding the role you want by using a specialist recruitment company like
ourselves is one thing, then excelling at the interview process is something
else; especially when organisations are increasingly using competency-based
interviews.
Today’s employers are searching for effective ways to improve their recruitment
procedures, increasing the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the overall hiring
process. The more accurate their search for a candidate is, the more likely they
are to find the right fit for their company culture first-time around.
This means that careful applicant selection can lead to a more efficient and
effective interview process, employing the right candidate first time, which can
result in improved team morale, and a stronger skilled and motivated group of
employees.
Competency-based interviews, otherwise known as “situational” or “behavioural”
interviews, are an increasingly popular solution for companies and businesses
throughout the UK.
Unfortunately, if you are not prepared for a competency-based interview, you
could easily miss out on that role in a company that can move your career
forward.
Here is a comprehensive guide to everything you need to know about the
competency-based recruitment process so that you can stand out in your next
interview.
In this guide, we share a step by step approach, which includes:
• Practice and preparation
• Example scenarios to use
• Effective Body language
• …. and even what to wear
This report is based on our own experience of how our successful candidates
have secured the role they want.
Best regards,
Rhys Williams
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What is a Competency-Based Interview?
A “competency-based interview” or “CBI”, is a style of interviewing designed to give a
hiring, HR manager and company greater insight into how well you demonstrate the “key
competencies” required in the specific role you have applied for. Employers are looking for
you to demonstrate your skills, knowledge, and attitude towards your work.
In other words, it’s about looking beyond the results on your CV and instead examining how
you have responded to real-life situations that might occur daily in your role.
Functional and skill experience is one thing, and the competencies an individual uses to
deliver their skills within their role is critical.
In the manufacturing sector, classic competencies you can expect to be questioned about
are:
• Leadership
• Teamworking
• Communication
• Attention to detail
• Problem-solving
Depending on the specifics of the role you are applying for, you might also need to
demonstrate other competencies such as critical thinking, reliability, and flexibility, especially
around taking on board new skills.
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This style of interview is particularly valuable for companies in search of critical skills and
characteristics in new employees.
The Benefits of Competency-Based Interviews
for Employers
Some of the main advantages of competency-based interviews for employers include:
The ability to reduce bias: While a lot of today’s companies know that diversity can
contribute towards a more efficient workforce, many are also susceptible to the practice
of consistently hiring the same people, from the same backgrounds, out of habit.
Competency-based scoring and interviewing allows hiring managers to reduce bias, and focus
on identifying employees that have fundamental skills while sharing essential behaviours, and
attitudes, rather than only demographics and backgrounds.
The chance to simplify the hiring process: The search for the ideal candidate can be a
time-consuming task of hiring managers. Tracking the right potential applicants, conducting
interviews, and following up with each possible employee is a significant investment of
resources and time.
However, structured interviews are far more accurate when it comes to choosing the ideal
candidate. By structuring the hiring process with competency-based questions, companies can
streamline the hiring experience, saving both time and money.
Improve candidate feedback: Whether an applicant receives an offer or not, feedback
is essential; 94% of candidates say they would appreciate feedback after their interview.
Competency-based interviews allow HR and recruiting managers and specialist recruiters
involved in the process to provide informative feedback that supports the company’s decisions.
Reduce employee turnover: By using competency-based recruitment and selection
processes, businesses can benefit from a significantly lower attrition rate. After all, once a
company has evaluated the requirements of the open position and identified the competencies
most relevant to the role, they can focus on finding a candidate who demonstrates the
competencies required.
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The Benefits of Competency-Based Interviews
for Candidates
In a world where employees are always searching for a better cultural fit from their workplace,
competency-based interviews can help applicants to determine whether they are a good match
for the job at hand, or whether they might be better suited to a position in a different company.
Additionally, competency-based interviews help to ensure that candidates do not fall victim to
the temptation of saying what they think the prospective employer wants to hear to get the job.
It is not unusual for applicants to exaggerate their skills, experiences, and results to increase
their chances of an offer, only to discover that they are out of their depth and struggling in their
new position as a result.
For candidates, competency-based interviews can:
• Outline clear expectations as to what a role entails, and what the employee will be
expected to do during their time within the company.
• Help team members understand the fundamental values of the organisation that they will
be working for. This allows a candidate to be sure that these values match their own and
to confirm in their mind that this is the company for them.
• Let a candidate demonstrate, using evidence from previous and current roles, that
they have the knowledge, skills, attitude, and desire to succeed in the position they are
applying for.
Although competency-based interviews have been around for years, many people are still
less familiar with the structure and types of questions asked in this style of interview. The best
way to prepare for a competency-based experience is to know exactly what to expect.
Typically, competency-based interviews include a range of questions that help your potential
employer understand how you might respond to a situation. The response you outline will
determine whether you appear to have the core competency the hiring manager is looking for.
Sometimes, competency-based interviews will also include questions that explore how much a
candidate knows about the company or the manufacturing industry as a whole. Usually, these
questions are asked to determine how committed the applicant is to their prospective new
role.
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Some of the most common competencies include:
• Critical Thinking
• Communication
• Attention to detail
• Leadership
• Teamwork
• Knowledge of the Supply Chain
• Delegation
• Flexibility
• Organisation
• Report Writing
• Motivation
• Decision Making
The Competency-Based Interview Structure
The questions you will be asked in a competency-based interview means you will need to refer
to the experiences you have had in your current and previous roles. Hobbies and voluntary
work can help you to demonstrate your use of particular skills; though ideally stick to examples
from your current role.
For instance, if you are asked for an example of your ability to be flexible and an example was
how you work with new materials, the question might sound like “describe a recent situation
when you were tasked with working with a material you have never worked with before”.
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Take the time to brainstorm
experiences that you can use as
examples in your interview
Most competency-based questions will begin in a similar way, such as:
• Tell us about a time…
• Describe for us a situation…
• Give an example of…
• How would you respond to…
The interviewer might also follow up with additional questions designed to clarify some of
the points you have made, or give you a chance to expand on your answer if you have not
demonstrated your ability to use the skill the prospective employer is looking for.
Take the time to brainstorm experiences that you can use as examples in your interview.
Additionally, remember that it is usually acceptable to ask your interviewer for a few moments
to think about your answer before you respond.
How to Perform Well in Your Interview
To make sure that you have the best chances of success in your interview, be well-prepared.
Find out which competencies the potential employer is looking for in advance and plan your
answers carefully; think about the most appropriate examples that will demonstrate your
unique skills.
The first way should be to contact your recruitment consultant. They will have helped
hundreds of people in your position before and critically they will also know the company in
question, their style approach and what are the ‘must-have’ competencies that the hiring
manager is looking for.
Next, check what competencies will be assessed by referring to the job description. Make a
note of any critical skills or characteristics that are listed. For instance, if the job description
states that the employer is looking for someone who “works well in a team”, you will know that
teamwork is one of their core competencies.
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Researching the company and the whole sector before your interview will also help you to
demonstrate the competencies of “motivation” and “commitment”. If you can show your hiring
manager or interviewer that you took the initiative to visit their company website, researched
their products and services and that you also know the latest manufacturing trends will make
you a standout candidate.
Preparing for Competency-Based Questions
Your recruitment consultant and job description are the best places to get more information
about which competencies you might be tested on during an interview.
While the type of question you are asked during the interview will depend primarily on the
specific role you are applying for, all of the questions posed will be designed to allow you to
demonstrate your particular skills, competencies knowledge and attitudes and how they might
relate to your new position within the organisation.
To show your competencies, you can draw from your current and previous roles, or if you are in
the early stages of your career, your personal life, voluntary work or academic experiences.
Here are some examples of the questions that you might be asked to demonstrate different
skills:
• Verbal skills: Tell us about a situation where your communication skills resolved a problem.
• Creativity: Describe a project or situation where you felt that a conventional approach
would not be suitable. How did you use your creativity, and what were the results?
• Decisiveness: What would you say the most critical manufacturing decision you have made
recently has been? How did you go about making that decision?
• Delegation: How would you determine how specific responsibilities in your new role should
be delegated? How have you made use of delegation in the past?
• Flexibility: Describe a situation where you had to change your plan halfway through a
project.
• Leadership: Tell us about a situation where you had to use your skills to get a production
team to improve their performance. What were the problems you had to address?
• Teamwork: Describe a situation where you acted as a member of a team. What was the
outcome of the group project, and how did you contribute to it?
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The key to ensuring the best outcome of your competency-based interview is to make
sure that you prepare your answers in advance. Take the time to sit down with the list of
competencies that you have recorded. Then review all the various projects and initiatives
you have been involved with and plan out how you can use these as solid examples to
demonstrate what the hiring manager is looking for.
Make sure that you don’t “make something up”. Your prospective employer will see through
this. Ensure your responses are precise and accurate, which means that interviewers will
quickly be able to get an understanding of what you are capable of delivering for their team.
Using the STAR Approach
One of the best ways to make sure that you are well-prepared for the interview is to familiarise
yourself with the “STAR” model for answering questions. Recruitment experts frequently
recommend the STAR model as the best way for candidates to communicate points about
themselves in a way that’s clear, concise, and transparent.
The STAR approach asks you to identify four critical parts of your response:
• S: Situation
• T: Task
• A: Action
• R: Result
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This will help you to formulate your answer into a quick, concise response that addresses
all your key messages and ideas. For most people, the STAR formula can be a solution that
helps them to avoid going off on a tangent with their answers or losing the interest of their
interviewers.
Here’s an example: the candidate is applying for a production engineering role.
The interviewer’s question is: “Tell me about the time that you were asked to reduce the waste
in the production line.”
Answering this question with the STAR model might look something like this:
Situation: Set the context for the story.
“My team and I were asked to establish new practices to reduce the amount of waste created
throughout our production line, thus minimising cost and saving the plant revenue”.
Task: What was required of you.
“It was my responsibility to collate the research and impact of the current amount of waste we
were producing and identify ways in which this could be reduced.”
Activity: What you did.
“I analysed data on all the different variables starting with the materials we used up to
researching new practices that had been successful in other companies. I used a combination
of lowering the cost and simplifying the production line to meet the goal of waste reduction”.
Result: How well the situation played out.
“The research I carried out identifying different suppliers for our materials worked well, as
it identified some other areas in which the company could save money by switching to the
cheaper supplier while still withholding the same quality. The simplification of the practices I
also identified was implemented quickly and was adopted well by the whole team.
The result was that waste had been reduced by 21%, and the overall costs of the business
have been reduced without compromising on quality.”
Key points: It is essential to speak in specific rather than general terms and quantify your
success. In this example, we mentioned percentage declines, increases and time frames.
From a listener’s perspective, this makes the story interesting, and they are more able to
gauge your success. Nameless people and unquantified achievements make the answer less
convincing.
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Plan to Make the Right Impression
According to numerous studies, referred to in the Wall Street Journal over 70% of hiring
managers would be reluctant to offer a job to a candidate who turns up to an interview
wearing the wrong ‘attire’. The same research shows that 22% of hiring managers had
already rejected an applicant based entirely on the way they presented themselves in an
interview.
Although you may think that a competency-based interview would be less focused on your
appearance, the truth is that first impressions and your appearance still count.
It’s a great way to demonstrate your attention to detail too.
If you are not sure what kind of approach your chosen company takes towards business
dress, talk to your recruitment consultant who will have a thorough understanding of the
employer in question.
Additionally, look at the company’s social media and website pages for insights based
on photos of key employees and if in any further doubt, stick to the general rule that all
interviews are conducted in formal attire.
Ultimately, many companies believe that the way you dress for an interview helps to
demonstrate your attitude towards the position. If you fail to take the time to dress like a
professional for your interview, then there’s a good chance that you will not act professionally
on the job either.
Remember to Watch Your Body Language
There are plenty of different factors that can impact the way an interviewer or hiring manager
perceives you when you are applying for your next role. For instance, poor body language
could cause you to appear bored, disrespectful, lacking in confidence with low self-esteem,
or even untrustworthy in the eyes of your potential employer.
Statistics on the importance of body language vary, with some people claiming that our
body language accounts for 50-65% of all communication, while others suggest that
the number is closer to 80%. Either way, it is safe to say that everything from eye contact,
to how you shake your interviewer’s hand, could have a part to play in the success of your
competency-based interview.
Here are a few quick body language tips to be mindful of during the interview experience:
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1. Be Careful When Shaking Hands
One of the first things you are likely to do in an interview scenario is to shake the hand of the
hiring manager. The handshake is a straightforward and shared form of introduction, but it can
also be a way for your interviewer to gauge your personality.
Many hiring managers believe that a firm handshake communicates confidence and self-
assurance. If you know yours can be on the soft side, practice your handshake before you go.
2. Watch Your Posture
The way that you walk into the interview room and how you sit or stand during the meeting is
essential.
Keep your posture straight with your shoulders back and your head up. A comfortable position
for your hands is to have them on your lap when you are not using them to gesture.
3. Be Careful with Eye Contact
While you do not necessarily want to stare at your interviewers so hard that they end up feeling
uncomfortable, you do want to use enough eye contact to connect and build rapport. Good
eye contact also shows the person you are talking with that you’re deeply involved in the
conversation.
If there are three or more people in your interview, avoid giving eye contact only to the individual
who is asking the question. Instead, direct around 60% of your attention towards the person
who asked the question, while sharing the remaining 40% of your eye contact with the other
panel members.
4. Be Genuine
Make sure that you smile when possible to show your interviewer that you are genuinely
pleased to be with them. Be yourself; the interviewer will notice if it looks like you are forcing
yourself to act out of character. You can only keep up an act for so long.
What If…
Ultimately, it is difficult to know for sure whether you are going to be taking part in a
competency-based interview. Unless your interviewer tells you that this will be the situation in
advance, the best thing you can do is ask your recruitment consultant first or contact the
company ahead of time, and if all else fails, prepare anyway.
However, there is a good chance that your interview will be centred around competency-based
questions, as this is where the hiring manager is going to be able to gain the information they
need about your soft and technical skills which could be crucial to you securing the role.
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Preparing for a competency-based interview means that you can evidence your skills, knowledge,
and capabilities without simply restating whatever is written on your CV. At the same time,
the research that you will do to plan answers to competency-based questions will give you a
better understanding of the company and the role that you are applying for - which is always an
excellent way to impress a hiring manager.
As with any interview process, the outcome you experience will often be dependent on how
much effort and time you put into being prepared. The more you work on ensuring that you make
the best possible impression on the interviewer - regardless of what type of questions he or she
asks you, the more likely you are to nail the experience and get the job you have been working
hard towards when the opportunity arises.
Then Finally…
Ultimately, competency-based interviews require an investment of time and effort from both the
company in search of a new expert for their team and the candidate hoping for an opportunity to
thrive inside of a new role.
Ready to get going?
Best regards,
Rhys Williams
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Established in 2005 – Sigma Recruitment have recruited for some of the largest and most
successful manufacturing companies in South Wales and the South West, including many blue-
chip global organisations.
Our experienced team of consultants have a wealth of recruitment experience in manufacturing
including; automotive, life science, aerospace, electronics, packaging, FMCG, power
generation, plastics and many other manufacturing sectors.
We focus on recruitment for the following skills:
• Technical / Engineering
• Purchasing / Logistics
• Scientific
• Management
• Graduates
Why Choose Sigma Recruitment?
Sigma Recruitment has one of the largest and most comprehensive recruitment candidate
databases in the area. In addition to this, we offer FREE advertising with most of the UK’s
leading job boards, including Totaljobs, Jobsite, CV Library, JobsinWales and additional
industry-related boards.
We are therefore able to provide clients with an outstanding selection of candidates across a
wide range of skill sets. Sigma Recruitment has a thirteen-year proven track record of delivering
the right candidates, at the right time and a cost-effective price.
To speak with one of our experienced manufacturing recruitment consultants call us on
02920 450 100 or email us on info@[Link]
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