To ask for help with interviewing

[Ventingjustbecause]

I'm having a nightmare lately with interviews. I've got a couple looming that are competence based and I'm struggling massively to think of situations I can use from work. Background is I worked in large offices and call centres my whole career. One spell in a retail setting but that was also admin based in the back of a shop. WIBU to ask the lovely mumsnetters to help me by giving me some of your stories if only to prompt my memory and imagination skills. I just go blank as I've been out a while and don't really think about work or what happened there anymore!

The jobs with this style of interview are the large corporate offices. I'd be doing customer care mainly. Taking calls etc Some involve account management.

When you answer a competency based question remember S.T.A.R.

Situation- what was happening at the time
Task-what did YOU need to do
Action- what did you actually do
Result- what was the outcome

For a bonus point you could add what you learned or would do differently if you were faced with the situation again.

I imagine you will be asked things like:

Tell me about a time you had to deal with a difficult customer
Tell me about a time you worked successfully in a team
Tell me how you manage conflicting deadlines

Etc etc

Thank you for this. The problem is, I can't think of examples 😭

Well just look at the job description and what the person would actually be doing to earn their salary. They must be taking some action that has a choice of options?

Paste your cv and the job description into chat gpt or Gemini (the google ai tool)
Ask for the top 5 most likely competency based questions and responses based on your cv, using the star method

(you can also ask for generic/optimum responses)

this might help jog your memory

good luck!

Upload your CV and the Job description into ChatGPT and use this prompt:

Read my cv and the job description and suggest examples CBI answers I could give to commonly asked CBI questions for this type of job. Use my cv as the basis for your answers.

@RelapsedChocoholic @ThePassageOfTime Perfect, thank you for this!

I agree with the PP, you need to look at the job description/personal specification. They will tell you what you will be expected to do. For each one think of an example and practice saying it to the star model. You will/or should have examples if you have working experience but you may need to take the time to think of what they are. By doing this you will then be prepared as you will have pre-prepared a ton of examples, and got to know them very well so you can adapt them to the questions asked.
I had an online interview and a face-to-face interview and I had to put in a lot of effort to have the bank of examples against the core competencies and values they had, I also spent time talking to the wall to practice talking about them.

Also with the star model, consider adding in the action and result part a bit of reflection and learning in there, what challenges you faced, how you dealt with it, how you felt and how you controlled your feelings. What went well, what didn't, what you learnt from it, what you'd do differently.

In reality, you'll have loads of examples but you're probably overthinking it. They don't have to be really interesting or require you to have changed someone's life or anything. For customer service roles I imagine it's about showing how you deal with challenging people or situations. So think about a time when you dealt with someone who was unhappy or there was difficulty like not enough staff, and how you dealt with it in as much detail as possible. It really can be as simple as someone returning an item because it's faulty, although there would need to be some element of handling the situation. 'She asked for the manager and I explained that I am able to handle refunds so would be able to help her. I didn't think her request warranted escalating to a manager at that point, and I wanted to attempt to resolve matters myself first. I took her across to another till that wasn't in use across the shop. I did this to give the customer and I some privacy so I could get more information about why she wanted to complain. There were also other customers waiting to be served and I was conscious of their experience too.'

I watched lots of videos on YouTube before my recent interview and they really helped. I also listened to some interview affirmations, which is not something I am usually into, but I do think it contributed as I ended up getting the job (which was more senior and paid a lot more than my previous role).

Best of luck.

Do you have some example questions so we could suggest how we would answer?

You don't have to tell 100% the truth in these types of questions. If you've seen a colleague deal with a difficult situation, you could describe that, or talk about a made-up situation thinking about how you would behave. No one is going to check these things are true, and as long as you can demonstrate how you would respond/react I think it's fine to stretch the truth a little.

I expect employers will start to move away from competency based interviews as more people start to play the system in this way for interviews as well as the written applications.

I would expect to see more assessment-centre style tests in future to ensure that people are actually competent to do the jobs in question, rather than just good at memorising AI generated content. We are already doing more of this.

Civil service jobs in my department now have a warning against using AI generated answers in applications. I have no idea how anyone would find out that you had used AI... but its just a heads-up for anyone who is thinking of doing it.