Competencies and Competency based Interview

The culture of each organization includes such a notion as competency.

Each organization forms its own set of competencies, based on strategy and goals of the organization. Competencies also plays a huge role in business life of employees such as performance evaluation, succession planning and career path. Examples of competencies are as follows:

  • Customer orientation
  • Decision making and problem solving
  • Taking initiatives
  • Innovations
  • Process, quality and result orientation
  • The ability to work under pressure
  • Business acumen

Having the right set of competencies related toeach positionalso helps to carry out selection process among candidates applies to open roles. And the most useful selection tool is competency-based interview.

The competency-based interview is carried out by HR experts on the basis of the list of queries and cases (tasks) enabling to reveal out the behavioural approach required from a candidate in typical work situations.  A candidate is usually asked to give examples of solutions to required tasks from own experience and project his/her possible versions of behaviour in suggested situations. The evaluation of candidate’s competencies, as a rule, is conducted upon scoring system.   

The candidate who gains a maximum score on required competencies, normally has more chances to get the desired position.

To have right set of core competencies is very important not only for evaluation of current employees but for right selection as well.