Interviewing 101: Competency-Based Interview Questions & How To Answer Them

STAR techniques, competency questions… all the jargon is a bit much. Let’s break it down to help you nail that job interview.

Congrats! You’re entering the world of work… well, nearly. If you’ve got an interview for your first job, then you’re already halfway there! There’s just one thing. Interviewing. 

It’s always a little nerve-wracking putting yourself out there, especially when it’s the thing between you and your first real salary. A recent Student Beans’ survey showed that just over 30% of you didn’t feel confident when applying for jobs, so we’re here to help you prepare for competency-based questions and interviews. It’s a fairly standard technique that helps employers work out how suitable you are for a role. Sounds pretty intense, but once you’ve got the technique nailed it’ll become second nature. 

So let’s dive straight in. 

In this article:

• What is a competency-based interview?
• Common competency-based interview questions
• How to answer competency-based questions
• Tips to prepare for a competency-based interview

What is a competency-based interview?

A competency-based interview is a technique used where an interviewer has a set of questions that each focus on a specific skill needed for the role. They then score your answers against a criteria, so it’s a little more formal than your standard interview setup. 

These style of interviews are becoming popular, especially with some of the top graduate schemes, as it follows a standard system which really focuses on the skills needed for a job role. Common types of competencies that most employers will look for are:

• Communication skills
• Flexibility
• Organisation
• Conflict resolution
• Problem solving

It might seem a bit daunting from the offset, but they’re actually a great way to prepare for an interview because you can apply your skills to a lot of different situations. So it’s perfect if you don’t have a lot of experience on your CV.

Common competency-based interview questions

Competency-based questions will be aiming to test you on what skills you’d need for the job role. So when you answer them, you should reflect on real life situations. If you don’t have a lot of experience, you can use other scenarios like university, clubs, hobbies or even home life if you think it’s specific enough. 

Some common questions include:

• Tell us about a time when you have handled a conflict between two people
• Describe a time when you’ve led a project from start to finish
• Give an example of when you’ve solved a problem and how you did it
• Tell us about a time that you’ve influenced a decision
• What would you describe as your biggest achievement?
• Explain how you deal with tight deadlines and turnaround times
• Can you give an example of when you’ve worked in your team, and what type of role did you have
• Describe when you’ve had to give really excellent customer service
• What would you say has been your biggest failure?

How to answer competency-based questions

There’s a bit of a knack to answering competency questions, and something that makes it slightly easier is that there’s a technique you can use, called the STAR technique. Using this to structure your answers will help you score as many points as you can. 

What is the STAR technique?

The STAR technique stands for Situation, Task, Action and Result. It can be a useful technique to structure your interview answers so that you touch on all the points the employer wants to know about. But it can also help keep your answers concise without going off on a tangent. 

Situation – Think of this as setting the scene. Always start with the context of what you were doing, for example ‘We recently were assigned to do a group presentation for my university course’.

Task – Pretty self-explanatory, but what did you need to actually do? This could look something like: ‘Along with contributing to the presentation, I was tasked with coordinating the team so we stayed on track’.

Action – This will be the main bulk of your answer, which explains how you managed to achieve the task and what route you went down. When preparing your answer, have a think about what skills they might be looking for, so in this situation it could be teamwork, organisation, communication.

Following on from the task, this could look something like: ‘I made sure that there was a clear plan of action for completing the presentation, that I shared with the group. To help with communication, I set up a Whatsapp group so we could all stay in touch if anyone had any questions about what they were doing. Further to this, I set up weekly library sessions so we could catch up on our progress and have a chance to help each other out if anyone was struggling.’ 

Result – What did you achieve? How did your action help lead to a successful result? An example of this could be: ‘As a result of my organisation within the group, we completed our group presentation, had plenty of time to practise, and we all achieved a 73% for the course module. I believe that having a clear schedule and organisation helped us achieve this result, as we were able to keep on top of our busy schedules.’ 

Tips to prepare for a competency-based interview

Now that you know the STAR technique, and what type of questions you could be asked, it’s time to prepare for your interview. Before your palms get sweaty, relax. This is the part that will set you up for any interview you have, so you can go in feeling confident that you’re going to smash this. And we’ve got tips to help you do just that.

Think about what skills the job needs ahead of time

When you applied for the job, you should’ve had a job description (we hope!). If not, when you get offered an interview, ask the recruiter or employer for a copy of this. The job description is essentially your golden ticket to interview preparation! 

When you have the job description, read through and highlight any of the skills that they mention (even if they’re not under role requirements). These will be your priority skills to prep your answers for as they’ll be the most likely to come up. 

Prepare answers based on the skills you think you’ll need

Once you’ve highlighted all the skills on the job description, you can start thinking about when you’ve shown examples for each of them. These don’t have to always be work-related ones, and if you don’t have experience in the workplace then it’s unlikely that an employer would expect this from you! Include any volunteering, part-time jobs, clubs or hobbies or even university projects as these can all show really fantastic transferable skills. 

It’s a good idea to prepare as many questions as you can, on the basis that for an hour-long interview, if it’s all competency-based, you might be asked around 5-8 questions. This gives you a good idea of how many to prepare. 

Sometimes it can be useful to write down your notes with the STAR headings to really help structure your answers and keep you from going off topic. 

Practice on a friend or family member

Practising your answers will really help you feel more confident and relaxed when it comes to your interview. It’ll also be a huge help to understand your answers too, as you won’t usually have your notes with you during an interview. If they ask a question that’s slightly different from what you’ve prepared, understanding your answers will help you adapt them more naturally instead of just giving rehearsed, scripted answers. 

Your family or friends are great people to practice interview techniques with, as they can tell you about things you might not spot, like your body language and how fast you are speaking. 

Don’t be afraid to add some personality

No-one wants to sit through a formal, monotonous, monologue when trying to find the right fit for their company. We’re not saying to crack jokes every two minutes, but don’t be afraid to add a bit of personality to your answers. A lot of interviewers will be seeing quite a few people, so standing out from the crowd will leave a lasting impression and help you on your way to getting a job offer. 

It’s also a great way of understanding the company’s culture before you take the job, as you want to make sure it’s the right match for you too.

Feeling ready for your interview? Make sure you’ve got your interview outfit prepped and ready to go with student discounts on your favourite fashion brands.