Competency Based Interviews-what are they and how do I prepare?
National Irish Bank has now commenced competency based interviews as part of the assessment process for roles in Personal Banking and Business Direct and has employed this method for many interviews in the past. This document is intended to assist members prepare for these interviews in addition to the already published video, and hints and tips on the portal by the bank.
Each role has a job profile and this profile lists the range of competencies required for someone to perform that role. A competency is a description of behaviours, knowledge and skills and the purpose of the interview panel is to assess and compare the behaviours, knowledge and skills of each candidate for the required competencies of that role. The interview panel will focus on your job skills and on your behavioural competencies and will assess your competencies by looking for evidence of how you have acted in real situations in the past.
Competency based interviews provide the means for assessing how a person has performed in previous roles so when interviewers ask you competency-based questions, they want you to talk about how you have actually tackled real situations in the past as how you have dealt with a situation in the past is an indicator to how you would deal with something in the future.
It is important to give a real example that actually happened to you. Once you have given an example, the interviewer will probably ask you further questions to get a deeper understanding of what you did so be ready to talk about your example in a lot of detail if required.
Examples of the Personal Advisor Competencies and some sample questions in those particular competencies are:
Professional expertise
Credit / Lending – use your personal experiences here
Knowledge & use of system – use your personal experiences here
Knowledge of procedures - How do you ensure compliance with policies in your area of responsibility?
Product knowledge – ensure you are fully familiar with the bank products
Customer focus - how do you go about building good customer relationships?
Business Development & Sales – tell me how your business unit/department delivers results for the bank?
Business Environment – What are the challenges facing the bank/your business unit in the coming year – how can you contribute to meeting these challenges?
Personal abilities
Planning and organising – Tell us about a project where you achieved success despite the odds being stacked against you. How did you ensure that you pulled though?
Relationship building – How would you list the support of your colleagues if you were given a project or specific task?
Communication – Describe a situation when you had to communicate a message to someone, knowing that you were right and they were wrong and reluctant to accept your point of view?
Coaching – What experience of coaching have you had in the past and give an example of how you have coached an underperformer?
Results oriented – Describe a situation where one of your projects/objectives suffered a setback due to an unexpected change in circumstances. How did you overcome these difficulties to achieve the desired result?
Initiative – Give us an example of when you went the extra mile/displayed initiative?
People skills
Achievement focused – Tell us about an idea that you managed to sell to your manager which represented a challenge?
People Management - Describe a change where you had to drive a team through change. How did you achieve this?
Operations Management – Describe a project where you needed to involve input from others, how did you identify that need and how did you ensure buy-in from the others?
The interviewers may assess each competency as outlined in the job profile and it is important that you:
Familiarise yourself with the job profile for which you are being assessed.
Prepare well for the interview, firstly read the job profile and other information available – think about the type of questions that may be asked for the role.
Should have an idea before the interview of the experiences that you could use as examples to demonstrate the key competencies
Take your time, think about your answer and gather your thoughts before responding
Prepare for follow on questions in addition to the initial question on each competency.
Give examples that are relevant, clearly state the situation, what action you took, or behaviour you demonstrated, and what the outcome was
Ask for the question to be repeated if necessary
Provide recent work examples if possible as they will be more relevant, but if that’s not possible, non work-related examples are also ok to use.
Dress smartly which will help you to feel more confident.
Listen carefully to each question and make sure you answer the question you have been asked.
Be specific about the part you played. Talk about “what I did” rather than “what we did”.
Remember, it is ok to ask for the questions to be repeated if you didn’t understand them the first time.
Can ask the interviewer to come back to a question later if you can't think of an example, at the time.
Be willing to ask the interviewer to clarify if they ask you a vague or ambiguous question. Rather than asking them “what do you mean?” you could say “do you mean such-and-such?” and show that you have at least tried to interpret what they’ve said.
Don’t use the same situation when responding to each question. Generally the more examples you use, the more you demonstrate a breadth of experience. However you may have an example of a task you worked on with different aspects to it that are relevant to the question being asked and if this is the case, then it’s fine to use the same example more than once.
Give a good impression to your interviewer from the very first moment you meet. Shake hands confidently, smile, introduce yourself, and be generally convivial to the occasion. Sitting quietly and communicating poorly will not help you, and neither will boisterous or arrogant behaviour.
You should be polite but outgoing, assertive but not aggressive and aim to be every bit as professional as the interviewer who is assessing you
If possible enlist the help of your manager/a colleague/friend to rehearse possible questions and your answers.