However, this option is seen as expensive by the majority of psychometric-assessment-using employers, who then prefer to conduct assessments on the final three candidates identified at the competency based interview.
And with that we are back to this animal. The competency based interview. What is it and how does it differ from the interview that we all grew up engaging in? And why is it a big deal? The traditional interviews we had previously, with questions that required subjective, opinion-based responses, asked questions like, what are your weaknesses, what are you most proud of, how you’re your qualifications contribute to this company, why are you applying for the job, why do you want to leave your current employer, are you a team player, what would your colleagues say about you, and so on. As you can tell from the questions, the candidate most likely to get the job would be that one most able to express himself (or herself) most persuasively both verbally and otherwise. We already know the kinds of evaluator risks associated with this kind of interview, but apart from that, can you immediately see how we could be in interviews all day and not once mention that specific competencies required for the job we are recruiting for?! Because we would have been depending on the skill of the interviewee in answering, and on the gut feel of the interviewer on ‘recognising’ the right person for the role. After that we would then just validate our observations with the reference check, which was also a series of subjective questions like ‘what did you think of him/her, would you employ him/her again, and similar.
