How to Ace Competency-Based Interview Questions (with 10 Examples)

Situation: Business growth had stagnated because talent was experiencing burnout.

Task: Analyze the team and improve profitability.

Actions: Met with key stakeholders to gather requirements. Identified top talent, replaced three leaders who immediately increased orders, revenue, and margins.

Results: Built, fostered, and strengthened high-performance team that delivered business 6 percent growth (on average) over five years.

Situation/Task: Senior leadership’s formal and informal communication methods were not producing the results they had hoped. 

Actions: I offered to help modify and adjust the content for the multiple, diverse audiences our senior leadership was trying to reach. I wrote speeches, speaking notes, presentations, articles, briefing notes, memos, blogs, and Q&A on 10 different leadership topics. I acted as brand ambassador and ghostwriter for senior executives to ensure their communication efforts were accurate and on point. 

Results: The quality of information improved, and senior leadership engaged their teams and were able to secure both internal and external buy-in to move ahead on a $1 million project.

Situation/Task: I was brought on to head uncharted digital transformation strategies within a matrix environment of stakeholders who held competing priorities, many who were resistant to any change. 

Actions: Applying a collaborative approach, I was able to compel strategic collaboration with and between the marketing, operations and finance groups. I gained buy-in primarily by using a “what’s-in-it-for-them” value proposition after careful evaluation of each stakeholder’s unique goals and objectives. Rather than diving in with a full-throttle approach that potentially could have been off-putting to the more vigilant stakeholders, I led the collaborative process with measurable small steps that preceded big leaps. 

Results: As a result, I was able to achieve a digital transformation strategy that saved nearly $500,000 in expenses while also propelling revenue by $3 million in the fourth quarter of 2020.

Situation/Task: I was working in the customer experience department of a large ecommerce retail company. We received an email from a furious customer whose young daughter was heartbroken after a (very expensive) limited edition doll she received for Christmas had fallen apart within weeks. The customer threatened to blast us all over social media. 

Actions: I immediately issued a full refund; when sending, I asked the customer to return the doll to us for repair (by paid return courier). I also called our manufacturer, who discovered that a new glue used in their assembly processing was at the root of the problem. I obtained a companion doll, and overnight expressed it to the customer with a personal letter to her daughter, asking her to allow this doll to keep her company while she waited for her own doll to get out of the repair hospital. When the original was repaired, I courier expressed that to the customer, confirming that both dolls were theirs to keep, and apologizing for the inconvenience the situation had caused. 

Results: The customer said her daughter was delighted, and thanked me for the response. She said she was going to recommend us to all her friends.

Situation/Task: When I was working at a fintech startup, my team was assigned four projects, all due at the same time. If we concentrated on one project at a time, we would never meet the deadline for all four; and there was no budget to bring in contract workers. 

Actions: As team lead, I called a meeting, in which each project was broken down based on technical requirements. Then I assigned team members to the project that best suited their own technical strengths and abilities. 

Results: With the workload divided and each team member focusing on tasks for which they were best suited, we were able to complete all four projects satisfactorily and on time. The clients were extremely impressed and it was at this point we began to scale quickly.

Situation/Task: With the downturn in the economy, donations were falling off precipitously for the charity I worked for as a fundraiser. We were facing closure within 12 months. 

Actions: After a brainstorming session with volunteers and other stakeholders, I sent out a message to everyone who had ever donated in the past, asking them to network in order to attract the attention of a local (or national) celebrity. At the same time, I started a crowdfunding campaign. 

Results: When a former donor connected us to an influencer with a large social media following, our fundraising campaign went viral and we raised more in 30 days than we had in two years prior to that.

Situation/Task: A colleague and I were scheduled to give a workshop (on stress reduction in the workplace) for a new client. It was important to the firm to make a good impression, but at the last minute, my colleague called in sick. 

Actions: I made several calls to professionals I know in the industry—who were both knowledgeable and experienced at giving these kinds of presentations. I found one who was perfect and who dropped everything to help. With only an hour before it started, we reviewed the material and format of the workshop. 

Results: The event was a success: We received great feedback from participants and the company that hired us committed to several more presentations over the next few months.

Situation/Task: We had a new department head at our store, who was eager to try out new approaches to improve sales and customer service. As floor supervisor, it was my responsibility to see that these new methods were implemented. Many of the employees were happy with things as they were and didn’t appreciate the changes. 

Actions: I led by example and by encouragement. While these employees were reluctant to incorporate change, they were still good at their jobs, and I didn’t want to see them quit. I attempted to motivate them by telling them we would test the results and measure the benefits.

Results: Once the employees saw that the new approaches actually worked, they were convinced. In fact, they became so engaged that they started making suggestions of their own to the department head for more changes.

Situation/Task: As a college senior, I headed a group project in my economics course, which was worth 60 percent of our grade. We were given a case study and had to come up with a report advising the fictitious company what they should do to achieve higher employee morale and retention and to improve sales. The group was unable to agree on any approach, let alone an overall plan of action. 

Actions: We met daily for one week and discussed each team member’s ideas. We then rated those ideas on the basis of how grounded they were in business theory and how likely they were to succeed. We agreed to implement the top scoring ideas into our report. 

Results: We aced the report, and I took away how important communication, compromise, and joint decisions are to success when working with a team.

Situation/Task: Traffic at our online learning platform started dropping suddenly, and purchases slowed dramatically. I had to research to find the cause and suggest fixes. 

Actions: I conducted a site audit, measured negative mentions in social media, and analyzed our keyword standings. I found a new competitor was producing a lot of high quality content on their blog and in video format. They were ranking higher than us on several keywords. Our own content was extremely good, but much of it was hidden behind paywalls. I had the marketing team produce content in both blog posts and videos, introducing the concepts we detailed in our courses, and all freely available. 

Results: Within several weeks, we noticed a slow upward trend in terms of traffic and purchases. It took three months to regain our standing, but with a regular content publishing schedule we increased revenue by 10 percent within six months.

Situation/Task: As HR manager, I was asked to manage a situation which involved a salesperson and the clerk who recorded the transaction and submitted it as an order to the manufacturer. The order was incorrectly produced due to a poorly worded order, and the salesperson and clerk were blaming each other. 

Actions: I looked at the original invoice written up by the salesperson and then at the order recorded by the clerk. It was clear that the invoice was correctly recorded; however, the invoice was not clear in exactly what was to be produced. The lack of clarity was not picked up on by the clerk, who recorded the invoice verbatim. 

Results: My findings were that both parties were equally at fault; in fact, the manufacturer was too. The lack of clarity originated with the salesperson, but was carried through the process by both the clerk and the manufacturer, neither of whom thought to ask for confirmation. I recommended a change to the invoice form itself, which would eradicate those types of clarity issues. I also encouraged more communication between the three parties, which would go to improve customer satisfaction, increase productivity and ultimately profits. On that basis, I recommended that company policy be changed to reward all three parties when there are zero mistakes over a period of time, as a form of incentive.