If you haven’t already noticed, there is a new approach being taken in the nature of interview questions and it is occurring at all employment levels. It used to be that oral panel questions were focused on examining skills acquired through training and experience, what we call hard skills, which were pretty much what an interviewer could read from your resume already. So, it was a matter of ranking candidates as to their technical qualifications.
The emphasis in more recent years has shifted to what we call behavioral competencies. For fear of sounding like one of your old instructors (whose class you used to fall asleep in), let me explain, because it could make the difference between an interview that went well, and being totally befuddled about what is taking place.
To start with the basics, we will define “competency” as an underlying characteristic that you or I may have that will allow us to be a superior performer in the job that we are interviewing for, or to effectively handle the situations that come up in this particular job. The competencies required to be a Kindergarten teacher would be very much different than those for a Hospital Administrator, and there would be different personality types best suited for each.
When I said “underlying characteristic”, I meant that the competency is a fairly deep and enduring part of a person’s personality and can predict behavior in a wide variety of situations and job tasks. Furthermore, the competency is so related to doing well that having this competency causes (or is a key predictor of) the behavior and performance required for job success.
To tie all of these thoughts together, we could say that competencies are the underlying characteristics that you or I might have which indicate ways we would behave or think, generally applied to many work situations, and which it could be expected that we would have for a reasonably long period of time (in other words, a basic part of our personality). When you take this sort of view of competencies as I have described here, there are five types of competency “characteristics” that emerge:
Motives. The things we consistently think about or want that causes us to take action. Motives drive, direct, and select behavior toward certain actions or goals and away from others. (I think we all have some examples of how this works; good or bad… does this bring to mind children? If so, it may be because we regard children’s feelings as more transparent than adults.)
Traits. Physical characteristics and consistent responses to situations or information.
Self-Concept. Our attitudes, values, or self-image.
Knowledge. Information we have in a specific content area.
Skill. The ability to perform a certain physical or mental work.
As I mentioned in a traditional recruitment and selection process knowledge and skill competencies tended to be the traits of a candidate which received the most attention.
Okay, now tell me… did anyone’s eyes roll back in their head during this explanation? If they did, I hate to be the messenger of bad news, but you are just going to have to suck-it-up, because it is everyone’s prediction that there is no going back now, to the way things once were. It is just too costly today to replace personnel, so employers want every advantage in predicting a candidate’s success on the job. They figure it is easier to hire for the behavioral competency and train for skills (as a practical matter you just can’t do it the other way around).
I think this is enough for all of us to absorb for now, and it is a good place to stop. In a future blog entry I will try to come up with some examples of questions you may have thrown at you in an oral interview, and illustrate what the interviewers are trying to get at in terms of competencies. Generally, a question will ether put you in a situation and ask you how you would respond, or ask you describe a past work experience where a particular situation was occurring, and how you responded or handled it then.