Competency based interview questions with STAR example answers

What are competency-based interview questions?

Competency-based interview questions ask you to prove a skill with a real example from your past: "Tell me about a time you…" or "Give an example of when you…". The interviewer scores how you handled a specific situation, so the best answers follow the STAR method: the situation, your task, the action you took and the result.

They are standard across UK employers, and the Civil Service builds its whole recruitment on them through Success Profiles. Below are the competencies that come up most, an example STAR answer for each, how answers are scored, and how to prepare a bank of examples that covers any question.

How to answer competency questions with STAR

The Civil Service behaviours guidance describes STAR as a way to "set the scene, show what and how you did and the overall outcome". In practice:

Say "I", not "we". The panel is scoring you, not your team. Aim for about two minutes per answer.

Civil Service behaviours and other UK frameworks

GOV.UK describes Success Profiles as the recruitment framework used across the Civil Service, with five elements: behaviours, strengths, ability, experience and technical. Each job advert says which ones it will assess. The nine Civil Service behaviours are:

1. Seeing the big picture
2. Changing and improving
3. Making effective decisions
4. Leadership
5. Communicating and influencing
6. Working together
7. Developing self and others
8. Managing a quality service
9. Delivering at pace

The guidance says you will not be asked about every behaviour for one role, that the expected level depends on the grade, and that examples can come from work, work experience, volunteering or hobbies. NHS trusts, councils, banks and graduate schemes use their own lists, but the questions sound the same: teamwork, communication, problem solving, leadership, dealing with change.

Common competency-based interview questions, with STAR answers

1. Teamwork: "Tell me about a time you worked with others to solve a problem."

• Situation: Our council team had a backlog of 300 housing repair requests after a storm.
• Task: I was asked to clear the urgent ones within two weeks.
• Action: I met the two contractor leads, agreed a shared priority list, set up a daily 15-minute call and took over the tenant updates myself so the contractors could keep working.
• Result: Every urgent repair was done in 11 days and complaints for that month fell compared with the month before.

2. Delivering at pace: "Give an example of when you met a tight deadline."

• Situation: A minister's office asked for a briefing on regional bus funding with two days' notice.
• Task: I had to pull figures from three teams and draft the note.
• Action: I split the data requests by team, set a midday cut-off, wrote the structure while I waited and had a colleague check the numbers.
• Result: The note went in on time and was used in the meeting with only one small correction.

3. Communicating and influencing: "Tell me about a time you persuaded someone."

• Situation: My manager wanted to keep a paper sign-in system at our clinic.
• Task: I thought a tablet sign-in would cut queues, but I needed her agreement.
• Action: I timed the queue for a week, costed a two-week trial and offered to run it myself on the quietest site.
• Result: The trial cut the average wait and the system was rolled out to two more sites.

4. Changing and improving: "Describe a time you improved a process."

• Situation: Month-end reports took my team three days because data was copied by hand.
• Task: I wanted to cut that time without new software.
• Action: I built a spreadsheet template with lookups to the source files and trained two colleagues to use it.
• Result: Month-end now takes one day, and the template is used by another team.

5. Making effective decisions: "Tell me about a difficult decision you made."

• Situation: Two suppliers bid for our catering contract; the cheaper one had poor references.
• Task: I had to recommend one to the board.
• Action: I scored both against our criteria, called three of the cheaper supplier's clients and set out the risks in a one-page paper.
• Result: The board chose the dearer supplier and we had no service complaints that year.

6. Leadership: "Give an example of when you led a team."

• Situation: Our shop manager was off sick for a month during the Christmas rush.
• Task: I was asked to run the rota and the team of eight.
• Action: I held a short meeting every morning, swapped shifts so new staff always worked with someone experienced and handled the difficult customers myself.
• Result: We hit our December sales target and nobody left the team over the period.

Struggling to turn your own notes into an answer like these? The free STAR method answer generator builds a first draft from bullet points.

How competency answers are scored

Panels usually score each answer against what they expect at the role's level. A strong answer:

• is clearly about you and what you did;
• shows the behaviour the question asked for, not a different one;
• is pitched at the grade: a junior role wants you to own your own work, a senior role wants you to set direction;
• ends with a result, ideally measurable, and what you learnt.

Expect follow-ups such as "What would you do differently?" or "How did the others react?". They test whether the example is real, so pick stories you know well.

Build your example bank before the interview

1. List the competencies or behaviours named in the job advert.
2. Write two examples for each, in STAR bullet points, not full sentences.
3. Check you have a mix: a success, a failure, a conflict, a change you led.
4. Say each one aloud against a timer. Cut anything past two and a half minutes.
5. Do a mock interview with someone who asks follow-ups.

The National Careers Service also suggests researching the employer's website, which tells you what the employer is looking for and which examples to put first.

Mistakes that cost marks

• Hypotheticals: "I would…" instead of "I did…". Competency questions want the past.
• "We" all the way through: the panel cannot score what you did.
• A long situation and no result: two minutes of background and then "and it went fine".
• The same example for every question: it suggests you have only one.
• An example that does not fit the behaviour: a teamwork story for a leadership question.

Practise competency questions with AI

The free AI mock interview reads questions for your job aloud, asks follow-ups and marks your STAR structure, pace and filler words. In the real video interview, the ClapAssist AI interview assistant reads each question and points to the example on your CV that fits, laid out as STAR. Check first whether the employer allows AI help; for Civil Service roles, read the candidate guidance in your invitation.

Next: how to answer interview questions and questions to ask the employer.