What to ask in a competency-based interview

In a competency-based interview you ask about real past behavior, not about opinions. Instead of “do you consider yourself organized?”, you ask for a concrete example: “tell me about the last time you had to handle several deliverables at once, what did you do.” You choose two or three competencies critical to the role, not ten, and you go deep with follow-up questions. The prior assessment tells you where you already have signal and where it’s worth digging, so you focus your questions where they add the most.

The trap of the competency-based interview is believing it’s enough to name the competency and ask whether the person has it. “Are you good at teamwork?” Nobody is going to say no. That question informs nothing: it just invites a textbook answer. The competency-based interview works when you stop asking for self-assessments and start asking for real stories.

The principle: past behavior, not opinion

What describes a person isn’t what they say about themselves, but what they did. That’s why the key question almost always starts the same way: “Tell me about a situation in which…”. You’re after a concrete example with three parts: what happened, what you did (not the team, you), and what resulted.

• Instead of “do you handle pressure well?” → “Tell me about the last time you had to deliver something important with very little time. What did you do?”
• Instead of “are you good at resolving conflicts?” → “Tell me about a time you had a serious disagreement with a colleague. How did you handle it?”
• Instead of “are you customer-oriented?” → “Tell me about a difficult customer you remember. What did you do about it?”

The difference is huge: the first version gives an opinion, the second gives evidence.

Choose few competencies, go genuinely deep

The most common mistake is trying to cover everything. If you try to ask about ten competencies in an hour, you touch them all on the surface and verify none. Better to choose the two or three that truly matter for the role and explore them thoroughly.

To define which ones matter, start from the role and not from a generic list. We develop this in how to choose competencies by role. And if you want to understand what a competency-based assessment is in general, it’s in what competency-based assessment is.

The follow-up is where the value is

The first question opens the topic. What distinguishes a lived case from a rehearsed answer are the follow-up questions:

1. “What other options did you consider before doing that?”
2. “If you could do it again, what would you do differently?”
3. “What happened afterward? How did you know?”

Whoever lived the situation answers with detail and nuance. Whoever made it up falls short when you press. That’s why fewer competencies are best: you need time to follow up.

Anchor your questions in the prior evidence

This is where the prior assessment changes the game. If you arrive at the interview with a report on each candidate, you already know in which competencies they show solid signal and which ones are worth probing. That lets you allocate your questions wisely: confirm the strong points with a real example, explore the weak ones with an open question.

Prior evidence doesn’t answer for the candidate; it makes your questions stop being generic and aim at what’s left to verify in this person. The full method is in how to build questions from the assessment.

Common mistakes

• Asking about opinions. “Do you consider yourself…?” always gives the same answer. Ask for examples.
• Covering too many competencies. Few and deep beats many on the surface.
• Not following up. Without follow-up, you can’t tell the lived from the rehearsed.
• Ignoring the prior evidence. If you have the report, use it to focus; if not, you’ll improvise.

In summary

Ask about real past behavior, not opinions: “tell me about a situation in which…”. Choose two or three competencies critical to the role and go deep with follow-up questions that distinguish the lived from the rehearsed. Anchor everything in the prior evidence to focus where it adds value. The assessment doesn’t replace the competency-based interview: it makes it more precise. Start with the competency library or the details of the product.