Competences and Structured Interviews | Coaching & Personal ...

Where do your competences come from? Competence comes from your skills but you would be mistaken to think it automatically means ?high-level? skills. What structured interviews are about is establishing whether the competence you already possess is at the appropriate level for the job.

Below are some areas about which you might hear questions during the interview in a structured interview but remember this: a junior person can be competent in any of the areas covered here. A senior person can be competent in any of the areas covered here and the difference is the extent of the competence.

In other words, the junior person can be highly competent in a skill area as it applies to the junior job; whereas the senior person needs a higher level of skill to be considered competent for a higher level of job. So the message is about being competent to do the job at the level you are considering.

Think about these areas which commonly come up at interview and you can see that everybody doing any sort of job would have competence in all of these ability areas. The only differences are in the level at which they would be performed by someone doing a different or higher level of job.

What you should now see is that you don?t need to worry about structured interviews and your competences, because they are simply relative to the job you do and not some imaginary scale of high-level skill.

But what you do need to do is think HOW these apply to YOUR job, define exactly what YOU do, then prepare a little story to illustrate it.

1. Planning and Organising is possessing the competence or ability to establish appropriate courses of action for self and /or others to accomplish a specific goal; planning proper assignments of personnel and appropriate allocation of resources.

2. Motivational Fit could be described as the extent to which job activities and responsibilities, the organisation?s culture and values and the community are consistent with the type of work that is personally satisfying. The actual definition depends on you.

3. Problem Solving is the competence or ability to commit to a course of action after developing alternatives based on logical assumptions and factual information, taking into consideration resources, constraints and organisational values.

4. Work Standards includes setting high standards for self and staff workers as well as for the organisation. Being dissatisfied with average performance.

5. Delegation is defined as allocating decision-making authority to appropriate direct reports; utilising their time, skills and potential effectively.

6. Initiative shows active attempts to influence events to achieve goals. Being self-starting rather than passively waiting for something or someone. Taking action; being proactive to achieve more than is required.

Now you should see that you don?t need to worry about structured interviews and your competences, because they are simply relative to the job you do and not some imaginary scale of high-level skill. All you need to do then is think how these apply to YOUR job and define what YOU do, then prepare a little story to illustrate it.

I?ll cover some typical key actions and questions in the next article.

Peter Fisher is an expert Author, Career Coach and Webmaster for www.your-career-change.com where you can find tons of helpful things to do with competence and behavioral interviews.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Peter_Fisher
http://EzineArticles.com/?Dont-Worry-About-Structured-Interviews-and-Your-Competences?Here-is-What-to-Do&id=444233

Source: http://coaching.career-consulting-limited.com/competences-and-structured-interviews/

autotrader wachovia gonorrhea swag usps nicholas cage ray allen