Talent Acquisition: Why your competency based interviews don’t work and what you should do instead

Research conducted by several international research institutions looking at talent acquisition, concluded that assessment centres are the best in class method for candidate selection. Assessment centres, when run correctly, are able to predict job performance and assess future potential with greater reliability than structured interviews alone.

Competency based interviews seem to be the most common form of structured interview today with most of the organisations we have worked with using them as their primary selection method. At best, competency based interviews can provide evidence of what an individual has done in the past. Competency based interviews are designed to weed out any on the spot creative answers that employers fear they would get with more traditional interview type questions. This is because quite frankly, it is harder to string together a lie when giving a detailed description of something you have actually done whilst fending off a series of probing questions. There are a number of issues with competency based interview questions that I’ll list below to demonstrate how they put both you and the candidate at a disadvantage whilst also failing to eliminate the opportunity for creativity in a candidates answer.

1. They require the candidate to think of an example on the spot whilst under pressure.

2. The candidate usually only gets one chance per question to showcase their experience. The candidate will likely have dozens of good examples but the one they choose will be seen as their best in the eyes of the interviewer. This may not be the case due to nerves and the higher the position, the more examples the candidate will have.

3. Evidence of past performance is not a good predictor for future performance. Think about it, the candidate has just given a brilliant example of how they have implemented a change in their previous organisation. In their example they may have worked there for years, known all the right people to include based on personality, learned from multiple failures, had a deep understanding of organisational culture and appetite for change at multiple levels. They will have none of this when they start in their new position so won’t necessarily achieve the same results.

4. Competency based interview questions can be pretty predictable. An organised candidate should pre-empt the interview questions and arrive with a notebook full of pre-thought out questions. This would be a good indicator for the candidates ability to organise themselves and prepare, but it also means they can have a notebook full of pre-rehearsed lines. Therefore it does not eliminate the opportunity for the candidate to give you the best researched answers available on Google.

Assessment centres allow you to put candidates into situations where they can show you how they would react in a given situation. You can also put them is scenarios that they may not have experienced before. This can test a whole host of attributes such as diplomacy, practical problem solving or resilience. They also allow for in-tray exercises to see how a candidate could perform at routine tasks that they would be expected to perform within the role. And of course, you can still include interviews, written assignments, facility tours and candidate presentations within the assessment centre.

There are many key elements and intricacies that may lead to either the success or failure of your assessment centre. WTS Advice Group can support you with the design and operation of your assessment centre but for now, know this. The biggest mistake in assessment centre design comes from the failure to select an assessment aligned to what you actually want to assess.

Poor assessment design can lead to a misinterpretation of a candidates performance. For example, an exercise based on demonstrating team work for a cohort of potential leaders could misinterpret somebody's natural team role as their default leadership style. A popular team exercise is a scenario where the candidates are stuck on an island or lost at sea. The group is split into two teams that need to decide against the clock, what items they will take based on a given list. There’s a set amount of time, usually 5 or 10 minutes, for the team to choose their items. One of the team may take the lead and drive discussion where others may stand more reserved. In any case it is not that relevant because it is the candidates team role on display not their leadership style.

The exercise is designed to look at how people perform in a team of peers working against a deadline and not an assessment to look at how the leader of the team works with a group of subordinates. Assessors will often mistake a shaper to be the traits of an authoritarian leader. In this example if you want to assess leadership you will need to assign the role of the leader to someone in the group. Otherwise the default will be their team role personality which isn’t what you are assessing.

Assessment centres give added fairness to candidates as judgments are being made by multiple assessors. This makes it a legally defensible selection system because it withdraws the possibility of discrimination as all observations are recorded throughout. Another major advantage of the assessment centre method is the level of detailed feedback that can be obtained. The provision of rich feedback like this can give unsuccessful candidates specific, behavioural information about their strengths and weaknesses. Taking the time to provide this information will have a positive perception of the organisations brand image. It is also the right thing to do given the commitment all candidates have taken to participating in your assessment centre.

The cost of a bad recruitment decision can cost up to 3x the salary of the position depending on seniority of the role. The need for selection methods that are high in validity are needed when selecting a candidates and an investment in a well-designed assessment centre will be invaluable to your organisation.

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