What are competency interviews?

Competency interviews are job interviews designed to assess a candidate’s current skills (or competencies) and ability to thrive in the role that you’re recruiting for. These highly structured interviews help your hiring team dig deeper than what the candidate presents in their CV, providing a more accurate picture of the work they’ve done in the past and their approach to problem-solving.

There are generally three components to competency interviews: defining what success looks like in the role (in the first few months as well as in the first year), outlining which skills or competencies are necessary to achieve those outcomes and designing interview questions that evaluate candidates on those qualities.

Why are competency interviews important?

The way you hire shapes the future of your company. Today’s hires will become tomorrow’s leaders and decision-makers. At the same time, savvy jobseekers know that the candidate experience offers a preview of what to expect if they decide to join your company. If they feel the application and interview process was disorganised or not the best use of their time, they’ll be less likely to join your company.

Taking a structured approach with competency interviews helps increase the chances of making the right hire since you’ve defined what you’re looking for before starting the interview process. It helps you think long-term since you’ve identified what a successful candidate will accomplish during their first year in the role, and what skills will help them achieve those outcomes. It also limits the role of bias in your decision-making process because you’re asking candidates the same questions and assessing them against the same criteria. It also reduces the chances of interviewers dismissing candidates based on first impressions. Competency interviews also create better candidate experiences because every interaction with a candidate has a clear purpose and structure. Learn more about the benefits of structured competency interviews here.

How does Greenhouse perform competency interviews?

At Greenhouse, we understand that candidate experience is key to a successful hiring process. "Our goal is to ensure candidates get a crystal-clear sense of our culture, meet their potential teammates and understand the role they are interviewing for", said Greenhouse People Storytelling Strategist, Adrina August. To make sure the candidate experience is as inclusive and flexible as possible, our structured hiring process includes a series of competency interviews.

The process start with a kick-off meeting between the hiring manager and the talent acquisition manager. During this meeting, they align on the skills, traits and qualifications that the candidate needs to succeed in the role.

Once these attributes have been established, the hiring manager and talent acquisition manager create interview kits and attach them to scorecards. This ensures that all candidates are evaluated objectively and that the scorecard attributes are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.

To keep unconscious bias in check during interviews, we create diverse interview panels and use in-product prompts to help interviewers stay aware and remain objective.

For each competency interview or assessment, there’s a deliberate process and rubric applied to all candidates. "This rubric is designed to ensure that all candidates receive an equal opportunity to demonstrate their talents and skills during the interview process", said Adrina. "We create interview questions that assess a candidate on each attribute, and they are typically a mix of behavioural, skills and situational questions." Explore more about how to design interview questions here.

At the end of the recruiting process, the hiring team holds a round-up meeting to discuss the final-stage candidates and make decisions based on evidence and data, rather than on potential biases.
"We believe that these practices ensure a fair and equitable process for all candidates. We are committed to continuing to create an inclusive and engaging interviewing process", said Adrina.

Learn more hiring terminology by visiting our Greenhouse glossary.