Competency based interview questions with STAR answers from Kenyan workplaces

What are competency-based interview questions?

They are questions that ask you to prove a skill with something you have already done. They usually start with "Tell us about a time when..." or "Give us an example of...". The panel scores your answer against the skill the job needs, such as teamwork, customer focus or integrity. The safest way to answer is STAR: Situation, Task, Action, Result.

In Kenya you will meet them in bank and insurance interviews, NGO and UN agency panels, graduate trainee programmes and public service interviews. Even small companies now borrow the style. If you can answer six of them well, you are ready for most interviews.

STAR in plain words

• Situation: where you were and what was going on. Two sentences at most.
• Task: what you had to do, or the problem you owned.
• Action: what you did, step by step. This is where the marks are, so give it most of your time.
• Result: what changed because of you. Use a number if you have one you can stand behind, and add what you learnt.

A good STAR answer takes about two minutes. If you are past three minutes, you are telling the story of the whole department.

The "we" problem

Many Kenyans are raised to give credit to the group: "we organised", "the team managed", "we were able to". It is good manners, and in the office it makes you a good colleague. In a competency interview it costs you marks. The panel can only score what you did. If every sentence says "we", they cannot tell whether you led the work or watched it.

You do not have to sound proud. Name the team once, then switch: "There were four of us on the project. My part was the data. I built the spreadsheet, I called each branch to check their numbers, and I found the error." That is honest and it is scorable.

STAR interview questions with Kenyan examples

These are common competency-based interview questions, each with a short STAR answer from a Kenyan workplace. Use them for shape, then put in your own story.

1. Customer focus

The question: "Tell us about a time you dealt with a difficult customer."

Example (illustration): Situation: I was a teller at a bank branch in Eldoret. A farmer came in angry because his loan disbursement had not reached his account before planting season. Task: I had to calm him and find out what had happened, though loans were not my department. Action: I listened without interrupting, wrote down his details, walked to the credit desk myself and found that one form was missing a signature. I called him the same afternoon and told him exactly what to sign. Result: The money reached his account two days later. He still banks with the branch, and I learnt to follow a complaint to the end instead of passing it on.

2. Problem solving

The question: "Give us an example of a problem you solved at work."

Example (illustration): Situation: During my attachment at a SACCO in Nakuru, member savings in the system did not match the bank statements at month-end. Task: My supervisor asked me to find the difference. Action: I compared the two records line by line for the month and noticed that some mobile money deposits had been posted twice when the system timed out. I listed each one and showed my supervisor how to spot them. Result: We corrected the entries before the monthly report, and the SACCO added a check for repeated deposits.

3. Teamwork

The question: "Tell us about a time you worked with people who did not agree."

Example (illustration): Situation: I was a field officer with an NGO in Turkana, on a water project with officers from two partner organisations. Task: We had to agree which villages would get boreholes first, and the partners each wanted their own list. Action: I suggested we score every village on the same three points: distance to water, population and school. I put the scores in one table and shared it before the meeting so nobody felt surprised. Result: The meeting took one hour instead of a whole day, and both partners signed the plan.

4. Integrity

The question: "Tell us about a time you were asked to do something you thought was wrong."

Example (illustration): Situation: I worked in procurement at a private hospital in Mombasa. A supplier offered me a "small thank you" if I made sure his quote won. Task: I had to protect the tender and keep a working relationship with a supplier we still needed. Action: I said no politely, reported the offer to my manager the same day in writing, and asked to be removed from scoring that tender. Result: The tender went ahead with another officer scoring it. My manager later used my report as an example in staff training.

5. Working under pressure

The question: "Describe a time you had too much work and too little time."

Example (illustration): Situation: I am a nurse on a busy ward in a county referral hospital. One night two colleagues were off sick. Task: I had to cover twice my usual number of patients without missing medication rounds. Action: I made a priority list at the start of the shift, asked the clinical officer to help with admissions, and did documentation in short breaks instead of at the end. Result: Every patient got their medication on time, and the ward later adopted the priority list for short-staffed nights.

6. Leadership

The question: "Tell us about a time you led a group."

Example (illustration): Situation: At my TVET college I was class representative for the electrical engineering diploma. Task: Our workshop had too few tools, so practicals were running late and some students missed the bus home. Action: I counted the tools against the class list, wrote a short proposal to the head of department for a rota of two groups, and organised the groups myself. Result: Practicals finished on time for the rest of the term, and the rota was kept for the next class.

Behavioural interview questions: the same thing?

Nearly. Behavioural interview questions (behavioral, in American spelling) ask about past behaviour, because past behaviour is a good guide to future behaviour. Competency-based questions are behavioural questions tied to a list of competencies the employer has chosen. In practice you answer both the same way, with STAR.

A second kind, situational questions, asks "What would you do if...?". If you have done something similar, use it: "I would do what I did at my last job, when...". A real past example usually scores better than a plan for an imaginary day.

Matching your stories to the employer's values

Panels choose their competencies from the job description and from the organisation's own values. Find both before the interview: the job advert, the "About us" page, the annual report if there is one.

For the public service, the Public Service Commission is a good worked example. Its home page lists its core values as citizen focus, professionalism, innovation and team work, and says its Recruitment and Selection Directorate is responsible for "developing recruitment and selection standards and assessment tools to be used in the public service". So in a public service interview, expect questions where a story about serving citizens, doing the job properly, improving a process or working in a team will score.

Then match: write each value at the top of a page and put one of your stories under it. If a value has no story, that is the gap to fill before the interview.

Build your story bank

Fresh graduates: your attachment, final-year project, campus clubs and part-time jobs all count. One good story can serve two competencies if you change what you stress. If the panel opens with "tell us about yourself", choose one of these stories as your proof; our guide to tell me about yourself shows how.

Where marks are lost

• Saying "we" all the way through. The panel cannot score the team.
• Answering in general. "I usually handle pressure well" is not an example. Pick one day.
• A long Situation and a short Action. Flip it.
• No Result. Stopping before you say what changed throws away the end of the story.
• Inventing a story. Panels ask follow-up questions, and made-up details fall apart fast.
• Using the same story for everything. Have at least six.

Practise competency questions out loud

Write your six stories as bullet points, one line per STAR step. Then say each one out loud with a timer. If you can tell it in two minutes without notes, it is ready. For the rest of the panel, from salary to the questions you ask at the end, see our list of interview questions for Kenya.

In an online interview on your laptop, the ClapAssist AI interview assistant can point you to the right story from your CV when a "tell us about a time" question lands, so your Action and Result are in front of you. Some employers do not allow AI help in interviews or tests, so read the rules first: is ClapAssist safe?