competency-based interview questions for your job interview in this video i'm going to share four
of the best answers to tricky competency-based interview questions that are asked in almost
every job interview so if you're looking for a new job or your next career opportunity then keep
watching because by the end of this video you'll know not only how to answer those questions but
how you can adapt them for your own interview Hi i'm Amri Celeste an HR Recruitment Officer and
an Interview Coach with over nine years hiring experience and every week i'm going to help you
on your job hunting journey with all the advice you need to help you get a job you actually want
so if you're on the job search subscribe and tap the bell so you'll be the first to know when i
post a new video each week now in order to ensure that you can answer any competency-based interview
question you need to have a clear understanding of what a competency-based interview question is
and what the interviewer is trying to find out by asking them and there are a lot of different
types of interview questions competency-based interview questions measure your knowledge
skills and attitude or ability to do the job you're interviewing for so things like
relevant experience you've gained so far in your career your role specific skills like systems or
specific project experience your behaviors like for example how you might handle conflict or your
work ethic the first example question is give me an example of a time when you solved a problem
so i've picked a customer service job at random so that i can demonstrate a good answer for you so an
example answer to this might be while working in my previous role as a customer service rep i came
across a customer who was very upset as he had been chasing a refund and had been passed around
to different teams multiple times before he had a chance to explain the background of his situation
to solve this problem the first thing i did is listen to his query in full it was a long issue
that was not his fault and by listening carefully and showing empathy this not only calmed him down
but i identified that his payment details had changed since he originally made his purchase
i identified this by going step by step through the process to see where it fell down i was able
to go directly to the right team who processed his refund that day and sent a confirmation email so
he had peace of mind now in order to use an answer like this in your interview you need to understand
why this is a strong answer and why it ticks every box so first of all you've given an example and
when you do this it's so much easier for the interviewer to imagine you in that situation
so a situational answer is the strongest type of answer that you can give as opposed to a
hypothetical answer so also what you've done with this answer is you've shown that you've
taken a different approach from other colleagues because you've said that he was passed around
to lots of different teams and it was quite a long query so regardless of this you've taken
the time to listen and understand and empathize so you've shown patience and understanding here
also by utilizing your listening skills you were able to identify the problem and you took
an analytical approach to solve the problem so you broke down the process step by step
to see exactly where it went wrong before you ended the call you made sure that the customer
had peace of mind so not only by making sure that his refund was processed but also making sure that
he got a confirmation email so he wouldn't need to call back because he has something in writing
but also you are showing the interviewer how you resolve this query to completion
now on its own this is a very strong answer but it also takes a recruitment box that a lot of
interviewers look for and that is the star method so in this answer you've shown the situation the
task the action and the result it's a very strong framework to use to answer any interview question
however of course it doesn't always apply so if you're asked for example what do you know about
our company you don't need to try to shoehorn your answer into the star method but it is a very
useful framework to use to answer interview questions so the key to this answer is that it's
a structured example that shows your behavior your personality your skills and also how you go about
finding solutions so the next question is can you give me an example of a difficult situation
and how you handled it the best example i can think of is when i had a member of my team who
was underperforming on a consistent basis i had a conversation with the team member to see how we
could resolve this so we agreed on a performance plan that included some retraining exercises and
i also discovered through that conversation that there were some underlying personal issues at home
so i was able to work closely with this team member and give them the space and the time
that they needed to bring their performance back up to speed as they were a high performing team
member and i knew that while the temporary underperformance was challenging to manage
with a bit of patience and closer supervision in the short term i could likely resolve the issue
so with this answer you're showing a collaborative approach so you've shown that your first step was
to have a conversation with that team member and through that approach you gained a wider
knowledge of the whole situation so you also show concern for your team member and a commitment to
restoring their performance but also securing strong results for the company and again you've
shown how you resolve the situation did you find those first two answers helpful if you did
you'll be pleased to know that i'm giving away 20 example answers so i created them myself from
scratch and it includes the answers in this video so that you can refer back to them so click the
link below this video to download them totally free question three is how would you describe
your work ethic a strong answer to this would be i would describe my work ethic as very strong
i believe that if you've chosen to work in a role then it should be something that you're passionate
about and intend to give your best to i believe that when you care about what you do and the
quality of your work it's easy to be motivated to have a strong work ethic so for example over the
past year i've had 100 attendance at work and i've met all of my objectives for the past two quarters
and i'm on track to meet my remaining goals for the rest of this year now it might seem a bit
cliche to outright say my work ethic is strong it seems a bit obvious right but when you back it up
with your beliefs your values and an example it becomes a great response and the great thing here
is you're showing that you're being selective when you talk about choosing to work in a role
it shows the genuine interest that you have in the role that you're interviewing for
so do you have a question about an interview that you have coming up let me know in the comments
or even if you've struggled with any of these types of questions before
it would be really interesting to see what's been a challenge for you so the last question
is centered around relationship building because employers want to know that you'll be able to get
along with your colleagues so question four is what is the key to building a great relationship
an answer to this is in my experience communication and listening on a regular
basis is the strongest foundation for building a great working relationship because this allows for
check-ins sharing of ideas and understanding things from different perspectives which
can be used to adjust your approach for a more collaborative outcome for example while working
on a recent project with another department we realized that by adding a simple additional layer
to our process it allowed their team to collect crucial tracking and budgeting information that
they needed in a much easier way which they were grateful for and this made it easier for us to
work together with them in future the strength in this answer lies in the fact that it starts broad
so once you've said that communication is the key you can expand on that in so many different ways
here it's whittled down to a few beneficial aspects of communication like idea sharing
understanding things from another's point of view collaboration etc and then you move straight into
a solid example where you explain the solution from the beginning where you added another layer
to the process to solve a challenge that was being experienced by another team if you struggle with
really difficult interview questions you'll want to tune in next week because i'm going to cover
a really difficult interview question that's quite frankly a bit cruel but interviewers
ask it so you'll need to know how to answer it if you're interviewing at the moment so thank you
so much for watching please tap like if you got value from this video and i'll see you next week