Question 6. What are interviewers looking for when interviewing candidates?

Question 6. What are interviewers looking for when interviewing candidates?

Answer. List of 31 Core Competencies – The following is a summarized list of the 31 competencies listed by “cluster” (similar competencies related to a common skill set).

I. Competencies Dealing with People

1. Establishing Focus: The ability to develop and communicate goals in support of the

business’ mission.

2. Providing Motivational Support: The ability to enhance others’ commitment to their work.

3. Fostering Teamwork: As a team member, the ability and desire to work cooperatively with others on a team; as a team leader, the ability to demonstrate interest, skill, and success in getting groups to learn to work together.

4. Empowering Others: The ability to convey confidence in employees’ ability to be

successful, especially at challenging new tasks; delegating significant responsibility and

authority; allowing employees freedom to decide how they will accomplish their goals and

resolve issues.

5. Managing Change: The ability to demonstrate support for innovation and for organizational changes needed to improve the organization’s effectiveness; initiating, sponsoring, and implementing organizational  change; helping others to successfully manage organizational change.

6. Developing Others: The ability to delegate responsibility and to work with others and coach them to develop their capabilities.

7. Managing Performance: The ability to take responsibility for one’s own or one’s employees’ performance, by setting clear goals and expectations, tracking progress against the goals, ensuring feedback, and addressing performance problems and issues promptly.

8. Attention to Communication: The ability to ensure that information is passed on to others who should be kept informed.

9. Oral Communication: The ability to express oneself clearly in conversations and
interactions with others.

10. Written Communication: The ability to express oneself clearly in business writing.

11. Persuasive Communication: The ability to plan and deliver oral and written

communications that make an impact and persuade their intended audiences.

12. Interpersonal Awareness: The ability to notice, interpret, and anticipate others’ concerns and feelings, and to communicate this awareness empathetically to others.

13. Influencing Others: The ability to gain others’ support for ideas, proposals, projects, and solutions.

14. Building Collaborative Relationships: The ability to develop, maintain, and strengthen

partnerships with others inside or outside the organization who can provide information,

assistance, and support.

15. Customer Orientation: The ability to demonstrate concern for satisfying one’s external

and/or internal customers.

II. Competencies Dealing with Business

16. Diagnostic Information Gathering: The ability to identify the information needed to clarify a situation, seek that information from appropriate sources, and use skillful questioning to draw out the information, when others are reluctant to disclose it

17. Analytical Thinking: The ability to tackle a problem by using a logical, systematic,

sequential approach.

18. Forward Thinking: The ability to anticipate the implications and consequences of situations and take appropriate action to be prepared for possible contingencies.

19. Conceptual Thinking: The ability to find effective solutions by taking a holistic, abstract, or theoretical perspective.

20. Strategic Thinking: The ability to analyze the organization’s competitive position by

considering market and industry trends, existing and potential customers (internal and

external), and strengths and weaknesses as compared to competitors.

21. Technical Expertise: The ability to demonstrate depth of knowledge and skill in a technical area.

22. Initiative: Identifying what needs to be done and doing it before being asked or before the situation requires it.

23. Entrepreneurial Orientation: The ability to look for and seize profitable business

opportunities; willingness to take calculated risks to achieve business goals.

24. Fostering Innovation: The ability to develop, sponsor, or support the introduction of new and improved method, products, procedures, or technologies.

25. Results Orientation: The ability to focus on the desired result of one’s own or one’s unit’s work, setting challenging goals, focusing effort on the goals, and meeting or exceeding them.

26. Thoroughness: Ensuring that one’s own and others’ work and information are complete and accurate; carefully preparing for meetings and presentations; following up with others to ensure that agreements and commitments have been fulfilled.

27. Decisiveness: The ability to make difficult decisions in a timely manner.

III. Self-Management Competencies

28. Self Confidence: Faith in one’s own ideas and capability to be successful; willingness to take an independent position in the face of opposition.

29. Stress Management: The ability to keep functioning effectively when under pressure and maintain self control in the face of hostility or provocation.

30. Personal Credibility: Demonstrated concern that one be perceived as responsible, reliable, and trustworthy.

31. Flexibility: Openness to different and new ways of doing things; willingness to modify one’s preferred way of doing things.

(Credits – “The Value-Added Employee,” by Edward J. Cripe and Richard S. Mansfield, Copyright 2002 by Butterworth-Heinermann.)