When answering competency based interview questions, you need to be very careful. You have to ensure that you are portraying the specific attribute that is being questioned and you must make sure not to waffle or go off discourse.
The best way
to do this is to prepare such answers prior to interview or have an idea of
what you will answer.
There are
two ways of structuring answers to competency-based questions. The ‘STAR’
method which is widely known and used and what I will refer to as DOER. When
answering competency-based questions that require you to use situations to illustrate
a particular attribute or competency, the STAR model is most effective. STAR
stands for:
S Situation:
What was the situation? What happened?
T Task
required: What were you required to do as a result?
A Action
Taken: How did you carry out the task?
R Result:
What was the outcome?
When
answering questions dealing with making decisions and/or validating decisions
made or problem-solving, DOER is better used.
D Define
the problem: What predicament did you find yourself in?
O Option:
What options did you have for solving it?
E Explanation
of choice: Which option did you pick and why?
R Result/Outcome:
What was the outcome of your action? If faced with a similar situation would
you take the same action?
For some
questions, you can give hypothetical answers covering all angles to show that you
consider all options and are
level-headed.
Let’s look
at a few examples of how these can be applied:
Please give
an example of a time when you have worked with a team that was not your team.
ANSWER - STAR
Situation: Who your normal team is and what you do. The
new team you had to work with and why you were chosen to work within this new
team.
Task: What was required of this team and what was
your role in the team?
Action: How did you carry out your new team role? How did you
integrate with this new team?
Result: Were you able to achieve what was necessary?
How do you handle it if you know your boss is 100% wrong about something?
You could start off by saying, ‘I have had to
deal with such a situation and this was how I handled it...’
Define problem: What were you asked to do and how did you know
s/he was wrong?
Options:
-
Do it his/her
way
-
Do it the
way you believe to be right without telling him/ her
-
Approach
with way you believe is right and if s/he rejects do it his way, if not d
Explanation: Which way did you do it? Why
Result: Was s/he happy with decision? Were you
satisfied that you made the right decision? Faced with same decision would you
make the same choice?
It would depend on the personality of the
supervisor and/or my experience with him/her.
1.
If the supervisor
is easy-going, I could politely suggest to him/her an alternative way of doing
things
2. If the supervisor is someone who doesn’t like
to have his/her authority challenged or questioned I could accept the task, do
it in the most effective way and present the desired results to him/her. This
way I save myself being reprimanded and
everyone is happy with the result.
3.
If I were
new on the job, I probably wouldn’t question the supervisor except s/he is also
new, this is because I’d feel as they’ve been there longer they probably know
better than me especially regarding the workings of that organization.
