Competency-based questions, or interviews entirely focused on competencies (as opposed to strength-based interview questions), regularly crop up in recruitment for graduate jobs and schemes, so you’ll need to know how to answer these interview questions.

In this article: What are competencies? | What is a competency interview? | List of common questions | How to answer | Three example answers | Hypothetical questions | More interview types

What are competencies?

Essentially, competencies are skills, abilities and behaviours that will help you to be successful in a job. Employers will identify competencies that are particularly important to their organisation and the specific job role you’re applying for. Job descriptions and adverts often list the key skills required for a role and many graduate employers highlight the core competencies they look for on their recruitment websites.

Different employers and careers might require a slightly different set of competencies but the most common are:

• communication
• teamwork
• problem-solving
• leadership
• time management
• planning and organisation
• customer-facing skills
• delegation
• influencing
• decision making
• motivation
• adaptability
• commercial awareness
• creativity.

What is a competency-based interview?

Once employers have identified the competencies that are vital for working in their organisation, they use these as selection criteria for choosing new recruits. A competency interview is one way to do this.

To measure your suitability, recruiters will ask questions where you will need to draw on examples from your life so far to demonstrate times when you have employed particular competencies. The logic is simple: your past ability to use a skill is often a good indicator of your potential to be successful in the future.

Competency-based questions usually start along the lines of:

• ‘Can you talk me through an example of when you…’
• ‘Describe a time when you…’
• ‘How would you go about…’
• ‘Have you ever…’

While you can imagine how you might respond to a situation and explain how you would tackle it, try always to reinforce your skills by comparing the situation with something similar you have faced successfully before. Always give specific evidence where you can.