How To Survive In a Competency Based Interview

Lets face it, competency based interviews are tough. Competency based interviews are being adopted by many companies as a more in-depth way of assessing a candidate’s suitability for a particular role. The questions may be intentionally difficult and will demand that you provide examples to back up your experiences. The interviewer will look to obtain specific examples of when and how you demonstrated particular behaviours. The employer’s philosophy is that these past examples will display how a candidate will behave in the future.

Preparation

Preparation for these interviews is vital, particularly if you have not interviewed recently. These interviews will not only highlight you as an individual, but will also show the employer how you cope with stress and challenging situations. Only those prepared will be successful.

Dissect the job spec, highlighting the key skills needed from their ideal candidate. Generate examples from all aspects of your life: work, voluntary involvement, education and personal projects, ensuring they are relevant to the job role you are interviewing for. Try to think of relevant examples.

When explaining your answers, consider adopting the STAR approach. It is an excellent communication technique designed to enable you to provide meaningful, structured and complete answers to their questions. At the same time, it has the advantage of being simple enough to be applied easily to any example. The information will be produced in a rational manner and, as a result, your interviewer will be more receptive to the messages you are trying to communicate.

• Situation
• Task
• Action
• Result

Step 1 – Situation or Task

Describe the situation that you were confronted with or the task that needed to be accomplished. With the STAR approach you need to set the context. Make it concise and informative, concentrating solely on what is useful to the story. For example, if the question is asking you to describe a situation where you had to deal with a difficult person, explain how you came to meet that person and why they were being difficult. If the question is asking for an example of teamwork, explain the task that you had to undertake as a team.

Step 2 – Action

This is the most important section of the STAR approach. It is where you will need to demonstrate and highlight the skills and personal attributes that the question is testing. Now that you have set the context of your story, you need to explain what you did. In doing so, you will need to remember the following:

• Be personal, i.e. talk about you, not the rest of the team. Use ‘I’ instead of ‘we’.
• Go into some detail. DO NOT assume that the interviewer will guess what you mean.
• Steer clear of technical information, unless it is crucial to your story or the role. Instead consider the HOW and WHY of your behaviour.
  
• Explain what you did, how you did it, and why you did it.

What you did and how you did it

The interviewers will want to know how you reacted to the situation. This is where you can start selling some important skills. For example, you may want to describe how you aided the team to achieve a particular objective and how you used your communication skills to keep everyone updated on progress etc.

Why you did it

For example; when discussing a situation where you had to deal with conflict, many candidates would simply say: “I told my colleague to calm down and explained to him what the problem was”. However, this does not explain WHY you did this. How did you ask him to calm down? How did you explain the nature of the problem? By highlighting the reasons behind your action, you will make a greater impact. For example:

“I could sense that my colleague was irritated and I asked him gently to tell me what he felt the problem was. By allowing him to vent his feelings and his anger, I gave him the opportunity to calm down. I then explained to him my own point of view on the matter, emphasising how important it was that we found a solution that suited us both."

This revised answer helps the interviewers understand what drove your actions. It reinforces the feeling that you are calculating the consequences of your actions, thus retaining full control of the situation. It provides much more information about you as an individual and is another reason why the STAR approach is so useful.

Step 3 – Result

Explain what happened eventually – how it all ended. Also, use the opportunity to describe what you accomplished and what you learnt in that situation. This helps you make the answer personal and enables you to highlight further skills.

This is probably the most crucial part of your answer. Interviewers want to know that you are using a variety of generic skills in order to achieve your objectives. Therefore you must be able to demonstrate in your answer that you are taking specific actions because you are trying to achieve a specific objective and not simply by chance.

In conclusion:-

DO:

·       Be specific and personal. The interviewer wants to see how YOU respond to situations.

·       Try to think of genuine examples. Make sure you know the outcome of the example you are using, as this is the focal point of the interview.

·       Explain your answers logically and justify your actions.

DON’T:

·       Arrive at the interview unprepared. It will show, and the interviewer will lose interest very quickly.

·         Assume the interviewer knows what you are talking about. Go into some detail and explain your responses concisely and coherently.

                                                               Be yourself, and GOOD LUCK!!!!

A Comprehensive List of Major DONT's When Applying For A  New Job

As you can imagine, working as a recruitment consultant I see all sorts of applications from people all around the world. Some clearly take their applications seriously, taking due care and attention over the process, ensuring the information they are conveying is clear, concise and......TRUE! Others, sadly, do not. I've compiled a list of common faux pas that I come across on a daily basis from potential employees, points that if you take heed of, will optimise your chances of getting that much needed interview!

First things FIRST:

1. DON'T put the wrong information out there.

Wondering why the phone isn't ringing? I've had countless applicants put incorrect telephone numbers and other personal information on their CV. How am I supposed to contact you if I don't have the correct number? ? This also makes me wonder what kind of candidate you are if you can't even get your own information right.
On that note also consider offering alternative modes of communication. Only providing me with an e-mail address seriously limits my ability to contact you. Make sure this is a professional email address, as opposed to bunnyflufflover@blahblah.com, as this doesn't send the right message. If you have to, establish a work related e-mail that you specifically use for job hunting.

2. DON'T think we don't use social media.

Recruiters use social media as an excellent tool to assess candidates. If you're job hunting, it would certainly be worth adjusting your privacy settings on your Facebook account, so potential employers can't see photos of you asleep in the gutter last weekend. Also, I've said it time and time again, GET A LINKEDIN PROFILE!!! This is such an excellent professional outlet, where you can not only job search, but have colleagues reccommend you. This also creates a great level of transparency, and it generates an excellent professional presence for you online. A MUST!

3. DON'T put whimsical information on Job Boards.

I've come across many a candidate who has put nonsensical information on their job board profile, which definately doesn't put you in a great light. If your ideal job is to be "emperor of China", I'm unlikely to even consider looking at your CV as it's clear you're not taking job hunting seriously. Also, we see the salary brackets you offer, so if you say you want £65k when you're only on £14k, you're going to find it tough to move on from McDonalds......

4. DON'T sling out a generic CV and cover letter to EVERY job.

We can tell if you're doing this, as often there will be an incorrect job reference or a delivery of skills that aren't relevant to the role. This lack of attention is certain to get your CV neglected. If you're serious about a job, take the time to be precise in your application, hone in on the job spec and make sure your CV fulfills the criteria of the role. If you're not doing this, your CV will be too generic for every role you apply to - and you are unlikely to get interviews lined up.

5. DON'T apply and forget about it.

Again, if you are serious about a role, then follow it up several days after your initial application. We get, literally, hundreds of CVs coming through every day. Don't you think it's worth shining some light on your CV, and standing out from the crowd?

AND FINALLY....

6. DO NOT NEGLECT SPELL CHECK!!!

This is free on every single Microsoft Word package. I have very serious concerns with any CV that isn't spell checked and has poor grammar. This a such a basic element which is greatly overlooked by so many candidates, and it speaks VOLUMES about a potential candidate. If you are too lazy to take the time to review you CV, spell-check it and re-read to make sure it makes sense, then you are probably too lazy to hold a job down for any consistent period of time.  If you're having trouble composing a CV, check out our handy CV writing tips.

REMEMBER:

We are in a digital era where there are so many outlets at your disposal with regards to finding yourself the perfect job. Make sure  you're using every single one of them to your advantage to promote yourself professionally. Also make sure you are devoting time to job hunting, as these things can take time, but with patience, and taking heed of the above comments, you can at least guarantee you are giving yourself as much ammunition as possible to land that dream job!

Written by Ashley Sinclair, Recruitment Consultant at Agile Talent Management

Some people think that writing a CV is easy.  However, for a lot of us that aren't seasoned recruiters we can finding compiling a concise, professional CV extremely taxing. Why? They take a long time to get right, but with these handy tips and embracing the notion that you need to be confident in articulating your skills, you're sure to have the jobs lining up.

Tips and Ideas that will greatly improve the transparency of your CV:

• Your CV is a Marketing Tool.  Your CV is your marketing tool and key to securing that interview; you’ll need a strong one in order to sell your experience to the recruiting gate keepers, and because of this you need to make it clear, concise and devoid of your current pet's names and their hobbies (I've seen this on more occasions than I'd like to admit!)
  

• Recruiters actively source candidates online. Having a CV that clearly articulates your work experience, areas of expertise, accomplishments and strengths, technical and work-related skills, and anything else that makes you awesome will better your chances of being found via resume databases, LinkedIn or Boolean searches. If you're not on all the big job boards - get involved and see the jobs roll in.
  

• An Online Profile is Expected.  These days it's naive to ignore the social media opportunities that are out there, particularly LinkedIn. Having a professional online presence adds another layer of transparency to your professional career (as well as a platform for people to reccommend you and rant about your mad skills!). I can guarantee that I am more weary of a candidate who doesn't have a LinkedIn, so if you're not on there, get it sorted and get people reccommending!
• Keep it short and sweet. Don't rant on for 15 pages. No-one who has been looking at CV's all day wants to read an epic CV. Keep it short and simple, and assigning yourself a page limit (mine's 2) will keep you on track and ensure you're only including relevant information.
• Consider your layout. Again, think about the fact that the recruiter/HR department or director may have been looking at CV's all day. Consider the aesthetics of your CV, eg. is it visually pleasing, can you say the information is easily accessible? If you write paragraph after paragraph,  you'll find your skill sets and competencies get lost amongst all the waffle.
  
• Last but not least......Be INDIVIDUAL. It drives me mad when I see CV after CV with the same template. Add your own personal touch or flair to it, even if you just have some interesting facts in your hobbies or personal profile, it's  going to make you stand out and make me more likely to remember you
  
  

CV writing can be a challenge, but if you stick to these key ideas, you're going to have a professional CV on your hands this is surely to get you noticed.

Written by Ashley Sinclair, Recruitment Consultant at Agile Talent Management