How to Prepare for a Competency Based Interview? Delivered by: Director of Human Resources of IOM

okay good morning everybody my name is Michael Emery I'm the Director of Human Resources at the International Organization for migration or un migration I'm here today to talk about how to prepare for a competency-based interview these are sometimes referred to as behavioral interviews or situational interviews and these are the types of interviews that most of the multilateral sector uses when they're assessing candidates and and by multilateral sector I mean the United Nations organizations the EU organizations the International Financial Banks Etc now with a competency-based interview it's based on a a pretty important premise and that

is that if you can demonstrate that you have done it or successfully done the competency in the past chances are you will be successful at doing it in the future so if you've done it in the past you will be able to do it in the future so therefore with competency-based interviews many of the questions are focused on past experiences and I'll I'll unpack that a little bit as we go further into this into this recording now why do we use competency-based interviews it's because as a predictor of future performance that is how successful will

you be when you start in a new organization it's a very strong predictor it's it's estimated that a competency-based interview has a 0.51 predictor of success which when compared to all other metrics is is pretty um is pretty good the only stronger predictor is a trial period so an internship or a traineeship or something like that so this is why organizations use it because they want to be able to choose the best candidates for a particular position now uh let's talk about when you get the notification that you're about to have an interview and the

first thing I would say is prepare prepare prepare there's nothing more frustrating than coming into an interview as a panelist and having a candidate that is not prepared so you need to be reading about the organization you need to be reading about the Mandate you need to be Googling all of the current issues looking for the annual report looking for statistics Etc that's that's very important the the second piece of advice I'd give you is when you actually apply for the position make sure you save the vacancy notice um because invariably when you get notification

of the interview you go back to look for the vacancy notice and it's gone off the web and why is that important because the vacancy notice in in multilateral organizations contain the core competencies that define success in the role that you're being interviewed for often you scroll down towards the end and it'll say important competencies it'll be things like teamwork strategic Vision planning and organizing Etc and in preparation for the interview it's very important that you have these competencies as a focus because typically the panel will ask only questions on those competencies so that's why

it's very very important now in terms of the structure of an interview so you've been granted an interview typically an interview will follow the following structure firstly there'll be some sort of a an icebreaker question just to get you at ease and to get you talking it might be something like or how's the weather in Vancouver today or how was your journey here to the office in Geneva and then they'll go into more structured questions and the first of the more structured questions is typically a motivation question and invariably in ninety percent of interviews you

get a motivation question it'll be things like why did you apply for this job what is it about this position that you think you're a good candidate for what skills and attributes do you think would make you a successful candidate in this role so you know you're going to get a motivation question and when responding to the motivation question it's very important that you don't repeat what's on your CV you can allude to it but what the panel is really looking for is for you to explain what your value proposition is for the organization they've

read your CV so they know what's in there what they want to hear is what are you going to bring to this organization that is going to make it a better organization so that's what your value proposition is um after the motivation question and and again you know you're going to get a motivation question so prepare for it then they go into the body of the interview and these are when they're asking questions on specific competencies and at this point I want you to stick to a very important formula I call it the car principle

c a r and that stands for context actions and results so if you're giving an example give a brief context then talk about the actions that are attributable to you not to a team or not to a broader group but what did you do in that example and then very importantly talk about the results or the impact of your actions now a lot of candidates neglect to mention the third bit the the impact but this is very important because when it when a panel is scoring you they're actually taking notes and looking at context your

actions and the results or the impact of your interventions now there's a fourth letter that I often introduce as well which is L and that stands for learning often a panel will ask you about what did you learn from that experience or if you had your time again how would you approach the situation differently and this is a very important aspect of the of the response because the panel are looking at your ability to reflect and modify Behavior accordingly so think about that in terms of the the structure of your answers context action results learning

now often people ask me how long should a response be and that's a difficult question to answer because it depends sometimes you go into an interview and they say we have half an hour to do six questions so do the math okay we've got about five minutes per per answer um but generally speaking I don't think you should be going for more than eight to ten minutes per per question in the in the competency questions and and certainly you can be marked down if you're waffling or you're just um saying a lot of nothing and

and panel members are generally very good at seeing through people that are that are waffling now you've had the you've had the ice breaker you've had the motivation you've had the competency questions and then at the conclusion of the interview often you're asked if you have any questions of the panel now for a lot of candidates they struggle with this aspect of the interview because they don't want to ask necessarily an inappropriate or dumb question but they want to see they want to be able to promote that they've done their homework and they're prepared and

they're motivated now one piece of advice I have for candidates that struggle with this aspect of it is to have a pre-prepared statement and you might say to the panel if it's okay with the panel I don't have any questions but I would like to provide some additional information if that's okay and don't don't go on for a long period of time just um just sort of reiterate your motivation for the position and estate anything that hasn't come out in the interview that you really wanted to come out in the YouTube um you might also

have some very genuine questions as well and there are some good sort of bog standard questions like um what would you expect of the successful candidate in the first 100 days of of the position um so you know things like that that uh show that you've done your homework that you've done your research on the position and that you are motivated now when the panel is assessing your answers they're generally looking at two different aspects of your response the depth of the example and the complexity of the example now I often equate this to diving

in the Olympics if you do a very simple dive you can get great scores but the complexity is not there if you do a very complex dive your score might be a little bit lower but the complexity is there I think it's very important that you choose your examples that are commensurate with the level of the position so if you're going for a very senior position you wouldn't use an example that was something that was quite simple um and I'll give you an example of that um one question I asked in an interview one time

was give me an example of when you were ethically challenged and how did you respond to that situation and one candidate gave me an example of when she was in high school and her teacher accused her of cheating in a test okay well that's pretty simple another candidate in fact the next candidate gave me an example of when he was working for an NGO and the government had arrested his parents and were torturing them and had asked him to sign a deposition against his boss who was the head of the NGO otherwise they would continue

to incarcerate his parents now that's obviously a much more complex example with with much greater depth um so this is what the the panel is looking for also subconsciously and the panel don't even know this but subconsciously they're looking for five different elements one is conscientiousness so how conscientious is the candidate appearing to come across so don't come across as flippant or or nonchalant or not caring the second one is emotional stability and panels like candidates that are very emotionally stable they don't like people that are all over the place emotionally um they like candidates

that are likable they want to be able to say I like this person I can see myself working with this person and they like people that are agreeable that are agreeable to the culture of the organization and the culture of the workplace in which they're being assessed for and finally they like people that are slightly extroverted and not overtly extroverted but slightly extroverted and this is a can sometimes be a little bit of an issue if you're very very shy as a person or very introverted and you may have to practice maybe coming out of

your skin a little bit and being a little bit more animated now um in terms of the different types of interviews um basically now particularly since the the onset of the pandemic there's three different uh formats for interviews there's telephone interviews there's video interviews through Skype or through teams or through zoom and of course they're still face-to-face interviews now with telephone interviews one of the things that I suggest to candidates is to stand up during the interview you actually project your voice a lot better when you're standing up um and you do have a couple

of comparative advantages with the telephone interview for example you can have examples of your competencies that you want to talk about um on pieces of paper quite close to you but also don't be seem to be reading from a prepared text but also you can use what I call pitch and tone and speed and silence to your advantage okay because you want to be able to maintain the interest of the panel members because it's very difficult when you're not there face to face so you really want to be able to maintain their interest the second

type the the video the zoom or Skype or teams type of interview it's very important where your camera angle is and it's very important that you're seen to be looking into the camera often people take the interview with the camera on one side of them so we're getting a profile rather than a front-on so make sure your camera is front on make sure your background is uh tidy and appropriate and sensible and make sure what you're wearing is something that is commensurate with the position that you're being interviewed for and typically in the United Nations

it would be erring on the side of conservative and perhaps something with a slash of color that brings out your personality in the interview and then for the the face-to-face interviews I think it's very important firstly with all interviews you have to be punctual but make sure that you come warmed up into the interview now there's a lot of evidence to suggest that panelists will make up their mind about a candidate within the first 40 seconds and in fact it might even be much quicker than that and that's what Malcolm Gladwell calls thin slicing the

candidate they walk in to the room they have an immediate impression of the candidate and they make an assessment accordingly now your role as the candidate is to make sure you get the panel past that first 40 seconds so be warmed up be animated and really focus on on the job at hand and make sure that you're Ultra prepared for the interview I often talk about it's the importance of eye contact in a face-to-face interview and generally if somebody asks you one of the panel members asks you a question when you're talking about the context

you might address that particular panel member but then through eye contact and through hands bring in the rest of the panel so that you are inclusive with your answer of all panel members I think it's also worth noting that some candidates make some pretty preventable mistakes when it comes to interview I just want to touch on some of these common mistakes that people make the first one is the choice of a tire for an interview I remember doing one interview where a young man came in chewing gum with a t-shirt with no collar with a

Starbucks coffee and spent the whole interview chewing okay I was very very off-putting for the panel so make sure you actually wear something that's appropriate the second mistake particularly in the multilateral sector is asking questions about benefits and entitlements this information is readily available on the website and so there's there's no it's not really necessary to ask about that private sector interviews it might be a little bit different and that might be more appropriate but certainly not in the multilateral sector the third one the third sort of major mistake that you can make is not

being prepared a panel can tell very quickly if you're not prepared for an interview so prepare prepare prepare um and you know when I say prepare also be prepared where you're taking the interview if you're in um a place with very poor internet connectivity you make the choice perhaps to go into a hotel room which has strong internet so that you can make sure that you have a successful interview if you're taking it on a mobile phone make sure your mobile phone is charged it's nothing more frustrating than a phone dropping out during an interview

the next one is the use of inappropriate examples um and I remember I was doing one interview once where we asked for a an example of creativity and essentially what the person talked about was promoting modern day slavery through the use of of cheap labor so really be very very careful about inappropriate examples that's why preparation is so important you need to choose your examples in advance and choose them wisely the next one is a little bit more difficult and that is a try not to be monotonal when when you're giving an interview particularly on

Telephone interviews you want to be able to maintain the attention of the panel so be animated when you're talking in an interview try not to be monotonal the next mistake is a poor question at the end of an interview I remember one interview I was on and one of the candidates said is your organization still relevant and was trying to be provocative and it went down very very badly for with a very senior panel and um the last thing I'll say is uh it's quite often these days that after an interview a candidate will try

to connect with panel members on social media and that's considered a little bit of a a No-No and particularly especially before the interview if you know who the panel members are please don't try to connect with them on on LinkedIn or Facebook or whatever what is appropriate is to send some form of thank you and if you really want to stand out the person that has organized the interviews for you often it's an admin assistant or something send them a nice little handwritten thank you note and that's very very appropriate to do that and just

say look I really enjoyed the experience I'm thrilled even to be considered for this position and I I hope that it works out well foreign to the types of questions I just want to finish off with this I think it's very important that we emphasize that the competency-based questions are based on previous experience so for example the types of questions you might get is tell me about a time when you've been part of a dysfunctional team what was your role in the team and how did you address that dysfunctionality what was the result typical question

we've mentioned one before tell me about a time when you were ethically challenged how did you respond to that challenge a values question and often we ask this question what are the three values that are most important to you and how do these values translate into your work and again I want to reiterate that it's very very important that with your motivation response and with the your your end question you must have your value proposition shine through it's interesting that a lot of candidates young and old struggle with that question it's not because they don't

have a value proposition it's because they haven't thought about the question so perhaps that's your homework for tonight is to think about what are the values that motivate me and work you might get something very simple like a planning and organizing question tell me about a time when you've had to plan a major event what was the nature of the event how did you engage stakeholders how did you deal with setbacks what was the end result typical competency-based question and sometimes if the panel feel they're not quite getting you know past the surface of who

you are they might ask you a question to try to get to know you a little bit better and one question that one of my colleagues often asked was tell me about something that would surprise me about you and these are the sorts of questions which are sometimes called contrary evidence questions if the panel feel that they're getting an overwhelmingly positive feel about you they might ask you a contrary evidence question to check themselves or if they're feeling they're getting an overwhelmingly negative view of you as the candidate they may throw you a Lifeline to

give you a a simple question to answer okay so I hope you've found this little simple tutorial useful I do hope that you remain interested in working in the multilateral sector in particular in un migration and in fact if you are interested in jobs in iom I would really recommend that you go to our website www.iom.int and look at careers and jobs and vacancies we at any one time have 40 to 50 vacancies open and I would want to wish you the best of luck when it comes to your next interview thank you [Music]