Competency interview questions and the STAR method

Competency, strengths and the other kinds of question

A competency question checks that you can already do something the job needs, such as working in a team, solving a problem or persuading somebody, by asking when you last did it. Prospects says competency interviews are also known as structured, behavioural or situational interviews, and are designed to test one or more skills. TARGETjobs puts the difference neatly: competency questions are about whether you have the basic ability to do the job, and strengths questions are about predicting your potential.

A strengths question asks what you enjoy and do well, such as what motivates you, or what you find draining, and interviewers listen for how you say it as much as what you say. The Civil Service’s success profiles describe strengths as the things we do regularly, do well and that motivate us. Some employers have moved on again: EY now describes its approach as skills-based hiring. You will also meet motivational questions (why this firm, why this role) and situational ones (what would you do if), which ask about the future rather than the past.

The STAR method, with an example

Cambridge’s careers service says STAR is widely used, especially for competency questions, and recommended by many employers. Its advice for each part is a good guide to the proportions: keep the situation as brief as possible, give the action the most words, say “I” to show your own part even when you were in a team, and treat the result as the essential bit, the proof that you achieved something.

Question: “Tell me about a time you resolved a disagreement in a team.” Situation: “In my second year, four of us had three weeks to build a data dashboard for a module, and by the end of the first week two of the group wanted to start coding while the other two wanted to plan the whole thing first.” Task: “I was the one who had said I would keep us on schedule, so it was my job to get us moving.” Action: “I suggested we each write down the one thing we were most worried about, and it turned out the planners were worried about the data being messy and the coders about running out of time. So I proposed that we spend two days cleaning the data and agreeing the layout, then split into pairs, and I set up a shared board so each pair could see what the other was doing.” Result: “We handed it in two days early and got 72, the highest mark in the cohort, and in the feedback the lecturer singled out the data cleaning. I have used the same ask-what-you-are-worried-about question in two societies since.”

That answer takes about two minutes to say, and notice what it does: the situation is two sentences, most of it is what the speaker did and why, and the result has a number and a line on what they took from it. Prospects suggests adding that last part as a second R, for reflection.

The follow-up questions

Expect the interviewer to dig into the example rather than move on. TARGETjobs gives typical probes such as what your individual contribution was, and what you learnt from it and would do differently in future. Others you are likely to hear are why you chose that approach, what went wrong or nearly did, how you knew it had worked, and what the other people thought.

This is why a real example, told honestly, beats a polished one. If you were not the leader, say so and talk about what you did; if the result was partial, say what you would change. An example that falls apart at the second follow-up does more harm than a modest one that holds.

Video interviews

Many firms now use a recorded video interview as an early step, where questions appear on screen and you record your answers with no interviewer present. PwC, for example, describes an on-demand video interview whose answers are recorded and reviewed afterwards by one of its assessors. LSE’s careers service says that you will usually have a few seconds to read the question and then a separate time to record, commonly 30 to 90 seconds, that the timings are set by each employer, and that once you start there is usually no way to stop and record again.

So practise answering out loud against a timer, looking at the camera rather than your own face, and with a shorter STAR answer than you would give in person: a sentence of situation, most of the time on action, a sentence of result.

The questions students get most, and how many examples to prepare

TARGETjobs lists the competencies employers ask about most, including communication, teamwork, problem-solving, leadership, time management, planning and organisation, influencing, decision making, adaptability and commercial awareness. The questions behind them are predictable: a time you worked in a team, a time you led something, a time you solved a problem, a time you persuaded somebody, a time you managed competing deadlines, a time you failed or made a mistake, and a time you had to deal with somebody difficult.

Prospects suggests having five to eight examples ready that you can adapt to different competencies. Pick them from different parts of your life (a job, a society, your course, a project, volunteering), write each one out as STAR once, and then practise telling them aloud until you can do it without the notes.

With an account, cookie’s Interview prep runs a mock interview for the job you name with an AI interviewer, one question at a time, follows up on what you say the way a real interviewer would, and writes a report at the end on each answer. It uses credits and shows an estimate first.