Chapter 18
What Are Your Skills and Competencies?
In This Chapter
Spotting skills questions
Addressing competencies questions
Responding to skills and competencies questions
Practicing with sample questions
With job security in today’s market going the way of the ozone layer, the operative words are skills (what you can do) and, increasingly, a newer and broader employment concept termed competencies (how well you do what you do using natural talents).
The competencies concept includes skills and such related characteristics and natural abilities as motivation, industriousness, and attitudes.
In other words, the competency-based interviewing approach attempts to look at the whole package where you’re concerned. Suppose, for example, that you’re a certified expert in Java and there’s no question about your skill level. Competency questions attempt to uncover whether you also have the soft skills you need to pursue successful work projects in which organization, cooperation, and communication ease are essential. (Or whether your quirky personality drives colleagues to the aspirin bottle.)
Competency-based models fall into two categories:
Work-based competencies describe job-specific characteristics, skills, and abilities, such as fluency in the English language or the ability to read topographical maps.
Behavior-based competencies describe all the other personal stuff you need, in addition to technical skills, to do the job well. Competencies include abilities like:
• Prioritizing and planning work
• Using time efficiently
• Planning for additional resources
• Adapting to new technologies
• Keeping technical skills up-to-date
A competency-based interview is highly structured and based on the premise that past success is the best predictor of future success. Many questions designed to reveal behavioral competencies begin with “Tell me about a time when. . . .” (See Chapter 5 to find out about the behavior-based interview.)
How much must you know about competency-based interviewing? That depends upon where you’re interviewing. The competency-based interviewing approach is on the rise but isn’t yet a mainstream interviewing method for the majority of jobs in the United States. You can expect competency-based interviewing at larger companies and with the federal government.
By contrast, small and medium-size employers (where most of the jobs are) tend to stick to skills discovery in their interview questions. Their interviewers make informal judgments about how well candidates will use their skills on the job.
Be aware that some overlap in everyday usage of terminology occurs: That is, one interviewer’s skills is another interviewer’s competencies. To keep it simple, in this chapter, I use the s-word — skills.
When you expect to be heading into competencies-based quizzing, consider reading an entire book on the approach: Competency-Based Interviews: Master the Tough New Interview Style and Give Them the Answers That Will Win You the Job, by Robin Kessler (Career Press, 2006).
Recognizing Questions about Your Skills
Accomplishments, like some wines, don’t always travel well. You catch an employer’s eye with accomplishments, but when you change jobs, you leave your accomplishments behind.
What you do pack along with you are the skills that enabled you to achieve those accomplishments: mastering the subject, meeting deadlines, and researching on the Internet, for instance.
Experienced interviewers move past the citations of what you did to discover how you did it — the essence of your skills.
Interviewers may be straightforward in trying to determine your skills through questions about specific work experiences:
Tell me about a time a supervisor gave you a new project when you were racing the clock to complete an earlier-assigned project.
Or you may be tossed a pretend workplace scenario and asked how you’d handle the situation:
You’re monitoring and integrating control feedback in a petrochemical processing facility to maintain production flow when the system suddenly goes down; what do you do?
Other questions are less direct, going in a conversational side door to see how you react using such skills as conflict management and interpersonal relationships:
How would you deal with a difficult boss?
To pull off a ShowStopper interview, learn to recognize questions that spotlight the skills you bring to a job stage.
Answering Questions about Your Skills
Use storytelling (check out Chapter 5) to comprehensively answer skills questions. Remember, too, that social, or soft, skills (people skills) play a significant role in determining the winning candidate. Take pains to convince the interviewer that you’re a pleasant individual who gets along with people.
Consider that question in the previous section about how you’d deal with a difficult boss. Here’s an answer, underscored with storytelling that makes you look like a reasonable and conscientious person:
I would first try to make sure that the difficulty isn’t walking around in my shoes. Then I’d read a few books on how to interact with difficult people. I’ve never had a boss I didn’t like, but I have had to use tact on occasion.
On my last job, my boss and I didn’t see eye to eye on the best software for an office application. I researched the issue in detail and wrote a short, fact-filled report for my boss. Based on this new information, my boss then bought the software I recommended.
This answer centers on research skills but also highlights patience and acceptance of supervision.
The Questions
The sample skills questions in this chapter are generalized for wider application, although, in an interview, you should expect skills questions that relate to your career field: What computer skills do you have? Why do you think your technical skills are a match for this job? When is the best time to close a sale? What was your most difficult auditing problem and how did you solve it? Tell me about your typical workday as a probation officer.
Note that questions in this chapter may seem to be close relatives of the questions in Chapter 19. The difference is that those in Chapter 19 are intended to draw out your qualities as a human being; the questions in this chapter go after your skills. Is it a big goof if you mix them up? Not at all. Both are reminders to keep your self-marketing pitch up and running.
What is the toughest job problem you’ve ever faced?
ShowStoppers
Recall a problem, the skills used in your action to deal with it, and the successful results; this is a skills-detailed version of PAR (problem, action, result).
Explain how you can apply those same skills to the prospective job.
Clunkers and Bloopers
Recall a problem but not an accomplishment or skill related to it.
Say you’ve searched your memory and can’t recall a problem you couldn’t handle.
What do you like least about gathering information to deal with a problem (research)?
ShowStoppers
Comment that, wanting to do a first-rate job, you’re uncomfortable when you’re uncertain that you’ve compiled enough research to quit and make a decision that affects the well-being of others.
Reveal that you enjoy solving problems but become impatient with repetitive sameo-sameo answers leading to dead ends.
Explain that you use multiple resources — websites, books, journals, and expert people — and you become frustrated when key resources aren’t adequate.
Clunkers and Bloopers
Dismiss researching as work for the scholars among us, and say you prefer to be an action hero. (Even bank robbers have to case the job.)
Admit you prefer outdoor work and aren’t sure why you’re here.
How good are you at making oral presentations?
ShowStoppers
Discuss how you prepare. Name presentation skills. Mention specific instances when you’ve given a good show.
Offer to give a one-minute oral presentation on a topic you’ve practiced.
Clunkers and Bloopers
Say that you never do them because you’re terrified of speaking in front of large crowds.
Admit you were roundly booed at your last political protest speech.
How would you rate your writing skills in comparison to your verbal skills?
ShowStoppers
Discuss how both skills — as well as listening — are important to being a good communicator, and that while one or the other may be your strong suit, you’re working to become strongly proficient at both speaking and writing. Explain how you’re doing so — class work, independent study, membership in Toastmasters International or a writing group; show brief writing samples.
Concretely explain a real communication situation in your past; describe how you communicated the information and the result.
If you’re a weak communicator, give a compensatory response that substitutes another skill for writing or verbal skills; for example, in a technical call center, problem solving outweighs the need for golden tonsils and laudable business writing.
Clunkers and Bloopers
Rate your skill in one area as better than the other and clam up.
Say that public speaking gives you sweaty palms and you don’t like it.
How do you deal with unexpected events on the job?
ShowStoppers
Discuss how you immediately reprioritize your assignments in emergencies.
Mention specific instances when you were able to complete a project (or projects) on time despite unforeseen complications.
Clunkers and Bloopers
Tell how you just keep doing what you are doing until you’re finished.
Discuss an instance when an unexpected event resulted in disaster.
How do you organize your time?
ShowStoppers
Affirm that you put first things first. Each day you identify A-level tasks and get those done before moving on to B-level tasks. You return voicemail messages once or twice daily and urgent messages immediately.
Comment that you use up-to-date planning products. These include planning software such as PlanPlusOnline and PDA (personal digital assistant) hand-held devices, such as a BlackBerry. These kinds of mentions show that you are techno-current. If you organize yourself on paper, mention a formal business product such as a Franklin Planner. (Pulling out a pocket calendar is like pulling out a slide rule.) Conclude with true examples showing that you’ve completed multiple tasks on time.
Discuss how you went through a typical day on one of your previous jobs.
Clunkers and Bloopers
Say that you don’t usually handle more than one task at a time.
Reply that you don’t wear a watch.
How do you delegate responsibility?
ShowStoppers
Discuss how you involve everyone in the overall picture.
Discuss specific projects that were successful because of your team effort.
Clunkers and Bloopers
Reveal that you like process detail; admit your micromanaging tendencies to tell direct reports how to connect every dot.
Mention your belief that a task will be done right only if you do it yourself.
What’s your experience with group projects (teamwork)?
ShowStoppers
Mention a specific project, including the group goals and your particular responsibilities.
Discuss your positive relationship with the project supervisor; compliment coworkers.
Clunkers and Bloopers
Don’t identify your responsibilities; just say you all worked together.
Rip your coworkers as laggards and say you’re sick of doing most of the heavy lifting without credit.
Why should I hire you?
ShowStoppers
Summarize point by point why your qualifications match the employer’s needs to a tee, adding any additional competitive edge you can honestly claim. (Rehearse in advance to avoid stumbles.)
Include accomplishments and the skills that facilitated those accomplishments, plus relevant experience and training.
Clunkers and Bloopers
Fail to make the “perfect match” connection.
Offer only clichés, such as “I’m honest, hardworking, and a fast learner,” without factual backup illustrations.