UNFPA - Michael Emery - Competency-based Interviewing

okay good afternoon everybody um my name is Michael emry and I'm the Director of Human Resources at unfpa and I'm here today to give you some insights into Competency Based interviewing now as you're probably aware most parts of the multilateral sector including the UN and unfpa uh use competency interviewing to assess whether or not candidates are suitable for a certain position and having sat through literally thousands of these interviews I'm here to share with you some inside tips if you like on on how to prepare properly for a competency interview now before we go into

some of the tips I want to talk a little bit about the basic premise of of why we use competency interviewing and the basic premise is that if you can demonstrate that you've um uh can do the competency in the past chances are that you'll be able to do it in the future so basically if you've done it in the past you will be able to do it in the future and um in terms of the research why uh this is uh this this type of assessment is used um as a as a predictor of

future performance Competency Based interviewing or sometimes referred to as behavioral interviewing or situational interviewing is a 0.51 predictor of future performance which is a very strong predictor the only better predictor is a 0.54 predictor which is a trial period where you you come in and you do an intern internship or a trial period as a trainee so it's a very strong predictor to see whether or not somebody will be able to perform in that role as a result most of the questions that you get in a competency interview tend to be based on past experience

so it'll be a question like tell me about a time when you were part of a successful team what made that team successful what was your role in that team uh how did you overcome problems in that team and a good panel will be proving and and deling and trying to get to the bottom of what your role was in that in that particular team now in preparing for a competency interview therefore the first point of uh of reference is the vacancy announcement because in the vacancy announcements in unfpa and most parts of the the

UN system they will list the competencies that are most relevant for that position so first tip always always print the vacancy notice when you apply for the job because in ably we interview you a month or two months later and the vacancy has gone off the net and you're thinking what were those competencies that were listed in the vacancy announcement so please that's the first tip always print the vacancy notice therefore you have a reference of how to prepare for a competency interview now when um when you're preparing for the interview I I like to

encourage um uh candidates to think of what I call the car principle C which is context actions results so when structuring your answers you should be first of all giving a brief context um secondly giving the actions that were attributable to you as the individual not part of the team and thirdly and this is where a lot of candidates uh they actually forget the third bit is looking at the results or the impact of your actions sometimes we also throw in a fourth letter as well which is L which stands for learning what learning did

you draw from that experience um and if you structure your answer in that way then you're giving the panel what they're looking for um subconsciously the panel are looking for several things as well and and the panel generally don't even know this they're looking for people that are conscientious so you have to somehow rather project that conscientiousness in your in your uh interview they're looking for people that are emotionally stable so you don't want to come across as a Nutter during the interview um they're looking for people that are likable and agreeable and um uh

they're um looking for people that they feel will be a good fit for the position and a good fit for the organization um so certainly in your preparation for an interview you should be referencing the competencies structuring your answers in the c l context and um uh and be prepared to engage with the panel now a couple of other tips often in unfpa and other organizations we're using telephone interviews um the tip I would have for you if you are uh being um given a telephone interview is to stand up during the interview you tend

to project your voice a lot better when you're standing up rather than sitting down secondly on a telephone interview use pitch tone speed and and silence to your advantage you want to keep the panel that are on the other end of the phone awake and interested in your answers um if you're having a face-to-face interview this is uh this is a a um a completely different uh setup it's very important that you come in warmed up into an interview there's a lot of evidence to suggest um that a very natural in inclination for panel members

is to make up their mind about a candidate within 40 seconds of an interview starting so you really do need to come in warmed up and and ready to go um certainly at various parts of the interview the panel different panel members will be asking questions what i' like to advise people is to address the panel member that asked the questions with the context part of your your response and then bring in the other panel members with eye movements hand contacts Etc um the panel want people that are enthusiastic and um you need to bring

in that enthusiasm into your resp sponsors um now generally speaking the way that a competency interview is structured they tend to have what's called an icebreaker question and this is designed just to to get you talking they might say how was your your plane trip here today was it busy at JFK and that's just a general question to get you relaxed and get you talking often then they'll ask uh what seems to be a very simple question uh which is designed to ascertain motivation for the position and uh can be a question such as why

were you interested in applying for this job um what particular aspect of this job appealed to you when you applied something like that and this is a very very important question because as I said that first 40 seconds is pretty important and this is where you need to come across and not just repeat what's on your CV because the panel has read your CV what needs to come across here is the value proposition that you bring to the organization and to this role so what is it what's the intrinsic value proposition that you have that

makes you a strong candidate for this position and and that you want the the panel to to hire you for then they would tend to go into the the standard body of the interview where they're asking Competency Based questions and that can be anywhere from from 5 to eight structured Competency Based questions uh and then they all will typically wrap up the interview and give you the opportunity to ask questions as well now this is often a bit of an awkward stage for for candidates because um they don't know what type of questions they should

be asking and uh I can guarantee you that um I've been on a lot of panels where people have asked quite dumb questions where they've blown a good interview with a dumb question certainly in the multilateral context uh you don't need to be asking questions about benefits and entitlements because you can look at that on the website you should know that already now often um Council young candidates in particular if they feel awkward about this part of the interview uh one one thing they can do is to say look I don't have any questions per

se but I would like to provide some additional information if that's okay with the panel and that's where you have 2 or 3 minutes just to hit two or three really really Salient points about why you're a good good fit for this position and what's your motivation for the position again you can reiterate that value proposition invariably in Competency Based interviews you ask two types of questions um uh one is on how you work in teams and how you resolve conflict so you need to really think about what it is that uh how you how

you do work in teams and you need to have an example of um when you've been able to resolve differences or conflict within a team when you've taken uh action about that um also uh often we ask questions on a value proposition um a typical question on a value proposition might be something like what are the three values that are most important to you and how do these values translate into your work uh now that's an interesting question because uh candidates at all ages tend to kind of been kind of be stuck on this question

and it's not because they don't have a value system it's because often they haven't really thought about what their value system is and perhaps that's some thinking for you to to toh look at after this after for this video presentation and think about wow what are the values that are important to me now when uh a panel is assessing your answers in a competency interview generally they're looking for two specific things and one one is the depth of the example and the complexity of the example and clearly the the more complex the example that you're

giving uh the the higher the chances you have of scoring it's kind of like the diving in the Olympics the more difficult the dive the higher the possib the higher the possibility to get good marks uh let me give you an example I was interviewing um a uh for a position in uh as a country director position and I asked the question tell me about a time when you've had to resolve a conflict between two colleagues or two sets of colleagues and one of the respondents gave me the example of having two interns in his

office and they weren't getting on and he had a chat to them essentially he clunked their heads together and said you you two better get on and they he gave them a project to work on and they started working on it and now they're really good friends okay that's a lovely example nice result nice impact but in terms of the complexity and the depth of that example it's not really at the level that we're looking for for a country director um another candidate for the same position gave the example of an extremely volatile local staff

issue in a country office where he had worked where people were bringing AK-47s into the office and he was able to set up a a mediation and negotiation um system in that office and work through a very very uh complex series of of negotiations to try and resolve that issue now clearly that example had a lot more depth and complexity and he was able to score much higher on that example um it's also very important too that the examples that you give uh are actually attributable to you now remember one uh one particular IND when

I asked the question tell me about a time when you've led a Communications campaign and what was the impact of that campaign and I had a very eloquent um candidate that said to me that she had led the campaign on the launch of some big report and that report had 4 million hits on the website and 16 oped pieces in major newspapers Etc and uh I was looking at her CV as she was giving me this example and I realized that she was an intern in the office at the time so I actually drilled down

and I said what was your specific role in this example she says well mainly I Was preparing the press releases and photocopying the press releases so clearly she wasn't leading the campaign she was uh some backup support for that so she had misrepresented her um uh her level of contribution to that example so you need to actually be quite honest in that because with reference checking Etc um we can we can validate uh the extent to which your examples are actually true so to summarize uh I would say you need to be ultra prepared for

an interview you need to reference the competencies in the vacancy notice you need to think about good examples and bad examples of the competencies that we're looking at thinking about C A and L you need to be engaging with the the panel whether that's on a telephone interview or on a a face tof face interview and uh you need to be thinking about the depth and the complexity of your exam and you need to be thinking about the values or the motivation or the value proposition that you're going to bring to the organization and to

that role and if you're prepared the panel will appreciate it you'll feel much more confident and uh you have a much better chance of getting the job good luck with your next interview thank you