Structuring your CBI answers

Although you need to be ready for anything in an interview, preparing structured competency-based answers in advance can have real benefits. Structure can help you to pick out your examples from memory and avoid those blank moments when you can’t recall what happened next.

There are many recommended models for structuring CBI answers. You may have heard of CAR – Context / Actions / Results. Or maybe STAR – Situation / Task / Activity / Results. In their excellent online training, UNICEF use BACK – Background / Actions / Consequences / Knowledge. And let’s not forget STARE – Situation / Task / Actions / Results / Evaluate.

My own personal favourite splits the first contextual part into two: S/C ARL – Situation – Challenge / Actions / Result / Learning.

The challenge gives point and purpose to the story and tells the panel why it is significant and worth listening to. The actions are in effect a response to a challenge, or set of challenges.

Whatever model you follow, take the pressure off yourself by writing down your examples in note form. You might find the templates (download left) useful for this vital preparation. 

A few handy tips for preparing CBI examples:

*Don’t generalise, be specific. A smart CBI example will not range over years, but cover a specific period, and have clear challenges and outcomes.

*Be concise when describing the situation or context. Too much background history could kill your story dead. Aim to set the scene in two sentences.

*Choose your actions carefully, and use “I” rather than “we”. Focus on your role, decisions and follow-through.

*When describing results, ask yourself if you had any feedback from clients or other stakeholders. This might go down well in an interview along with tangible outcomes. 

*When assessing your learning, consider the impact on the present: what does the example say about you now, and your ability to do the job in question? How can your learning be useful for the organisation?

Competency-Based Frameworks

Many organisations in both private and public sectors make use of competency-based interviewing (CBI). This includes the United Nations and a number of other public international organisations. 

It's worth being well prepared for CBI. Trying to recall examples from memory spontaneously in an interview ("So tell us about a project you coordinated which received positive feedback from clients") might leave you floundering if you have not thought it about it in advance - and if you don't know your CV. 

The key challenge is to know yourself and your experience well enough to present good examples - or "stories" - which can concisely and clearly illustrate your professional skills, knowledge and behaviour in relation to the competencies which are valued in the job and/or the organisation. It sounds simple. But practice and preparation - including writing down your examples in note form - usually pay dividends in focusing your memory, and eventually allow you to be sharper and more flexible in the interview itself. 

Remember that the competencies might be specific to the job, or part of a broader "competency framework" which represents the organisation's shared culture - its core values and practices. 

If you get an interview, one of the first tasks is to find out if the organisation has such a framework, or a list of competencies relevant to the target job or section. Also find out if the organisation produces a guide for candidates, based on its framework, to help you prepare for CBI. 

If there is a framework, spend some time getting to know it. Competency frameworks are a window onto how organisations think and what they value. They can help you to locate the career examples which will have the best impact in an interview. Bear in mind that questions might also be about job-specific competencies as well as the more generic competencies - teamwork, planning and organising, creativity - which tend to appear on frameworks. 

For sample frameworks by the UN and other organisations, and sample CBI questions, please see my resources (left). 

Tip: 

For a simple and accessible introduction to the theory and practice of competency-based interviewing, I recommend the booklet produced by management consultants Barclay Simpson (see left). It gives a clear and straightforward introduction to CBI and some good sample questions and answers.