Competency-based interview questions: how they're scored and how to answer

Say you're asked, “Tell me about a time you worked with people outside your team.” You pick your best project, the launch you led last year, and explain the deadline, the hard technical problem and the result. It's a good story, and it can still score badly.

The question was testing how you work with other teams. Your answer was almost entirely about your own work, so the panel had nothing to write down under that heading.

That's one of the most common ways to lose marks in a competency-based interview. A public-sector hiring manager on Reddit remembers hearing it as a candidate: “we loved the example but it didn't answer the question so you lost points”.

The fix usually isn't a better story. It's knowing which quality each question is testing, and telling the part of your story that shows it.

What's different about a competency-based interview

The questions sound like any behavioral interview: “Tell me about a time…”. The difference is the marking. Before the interviews start, the employer chooses a short list of qualities, its competency framework, and writes each question to test one of them.

The format is most common in the UK, and not only in the public sector. KPMG's interview advice says its hiring managers assess candidates against its values, competencies, skills and experience. Deloitte's early-careers interview checks how well you match the capabilities the firm looks for.

Analyst roles use it too. The FCA's graduate telephone interview covers motivation, values and competencies, and a data analyst on Reddit was told their interview would be “competency-based but also centred around technical data analysis”. The Civil Service and the NHS use the same approach, under the names behaviours and values.

What the panel writes down

While you answer, the panel is taking notes, and each note goes under one of the competencies being tested. When you finish, they score each competency from those notes. That's why the launch story above can feel good in the room and still score low.

Most employers keep their score sheets private, but the Civil Service publishes its scale, and it shows how strict the bar can be. Each behaviour is scored from 1 to 7, and a Defra recruiter explains that you need at least 4 on every one to pass.

In the Crown Office's scoring guide, a 4 means “adequate positive evidence and any negative evidence would not cause concern”. So one weak competency can cost you the job, and so can one worrying moment in an otherwise good answer.

The panel can only score detail it hears. “I helped improve the process” gives them nothing to note. “I timed each step, found approvals took four days and proposed same-day sign-off for small orders” gives them several things.

Finding the competencies before the interview

Because the panel scores against a fixed list, most of your preparation is finding that list and choosing stories for it.

Start with the job ad and the person specification. Public-sector ads usually name the behaviours being assessed. Private employers tend to repeat the same few qualities through the job description.

Write the list down in the employer's own words, and use those words in your answers. A civil servant on Reddit says it shows you're paying attention to the job's needs.

Employers often use different names for the same quality. If a job ad asks for “working together” or “collaboration”, it wants teamwork stories, so the teamwork advice below applies.

Then choose two real stories for each competency, and make sure at least one of them is about something that went wrong. Deliveroo asks for examples of past successes and of what you learned when things didn't go well. If you're applying for a graduate scheme, stories from study and volunteering count.

Making one story fit different questions

You won't have a separate story for every competency, and you don't need one. A good project usually holds evidence for several. What changes between questions is which part you slow down on.

Take one project. A data analyst's team is about to launch a new pricing page, and the analyst finds that the test results behind the launch are skewed by a tracking bug.

Asked about teamwork, such as “Tell me about a time you worked with people outside your team”, the answer spends most of its time on the people:

“The fix needed engineering and the product manager, and neither had seen the data. I walked them through two charts showing where the numbers split. The engineer agreed to patch the tracking that day, and I asked the product manager to move the launch by a week. I sent a short update each day until the re-run finished.”

Asked about decision-making, such as “Tell me about a decision you made without all the information you wanted”, the same project is told through the choice:

“I had three options: launch on time and correct it later, delay a week and re-run the test, or launch to half of users. The bug affected about a fifth of sessions, so the result could easily flip. I recommended the delay, because a wrong price would be harder to undo than a late page.”

The facts don't change. The panel hears different evidence because you chose which part to tell in detail. Try this with your strongest project: tell it once for each competency it could prove, and notice which sentences you keep each time.

The six competencies panels ask about most

These six come up most often in UK employers' lists. Use them to check that each of your stories has the part that scores.

Teamwork

Teamwork questions, such as “Tell me about a time you worked as part of a team to achieve a goal”, look for what you added to a group. In tech and data teams that often means working across functions, which Monzo's data team calls “a really important element of success”.

A story told entirely in “we” leaves the panel nothing to mark, but the opposite hurts too: a reply on Reddit warns that too many “I”s can make you sound like you're not a team player. Say what others did, then what you did.

Leadership

Leadership questions, such as “Tell me about a time you motivated people who didn't report to you”, check whether people followed your direction. You don't need a title: leading a project, a shift or a student society counts.

What scores is how you won people over, including someone who wasn't on board. A list of your responsibilities gives the panel little to mark.

Communicating and influencing

These questions, such as “Tell me about a time you explained something complex to someone without your background”, test whether you changed what someone understood or decided.

Say who the audience was, how you adapted the message for them and whether they acted on it. “I communicated clearly” isn't evidence.

Problem-solving and decision-making

Questions such as “Tell me about a difficult decision you made” are about how you reasoned. The decision itself matters less.

Walk through the options, the evidence and the risks, as the pricing-page answer above does. Jumping straight from problem to solution shows little judgment.

Adaptability and change

Some of these questions ask how you coped with change, such as “Tell me about a time you had to adapt to a major change at work”. Others ask how you started one, such as “Describe a time you suggested a better way of doing something”.

Either way, the panel wants to hear what you did, not just that you put up with the change. Complaining about it, even mildly, counts against you.

Resilience and working under pressure

This group covers pressure, competing priorities and setbacks, such as “Describe a time you had to juggle competing priorities”. Panels want the choices you made, not how hard you worked.

Say what you prioritized and what you dropped or renegotiated. “I worked late every night” isn't a choice. For setbacks, see Tell me about a time you failed.

How the expected answer changes with seniority

Panels judge your story against the level of the job. For a junior role, a careful decision within your own work is enough. For a senior role, they expect decisions that affected other teams, and how you brought people with you.

Example answers

Each role below answers a different competency question, so you can see how both the question and the evidence change with the job. The answers are made up, but each stronger one includes the details a panel could score.

Values and strengths questions

Two other kinds of question often appear alongside competency ones in UK interviews.

Values questions ask how you've acted on the employer's values, which the FCA and the NHS both test. Answer with a real example, but give more weight to why you acted as you did.

Strengths questions, such as “What motivates you?”, ask what you enjoy and do well. Keep the answer short and natural, without STAR.

Practicing your answers

A story can look relevant in your notes and still drift away from the question when you say it, which is how the launch story at the top goes wrong. So practice out loud, and ask someone to interrupt with “What did you do next?” and “What would you do differently?”

Some UK employers also expect a reflection at the end: the Bank of England uses STARR, which adds it to STAR, so be ready to say what you learned. STAR method interview examples shows where STAR answers still go wrong.