Design interview questions around competencies
Design interview questions around competencies
Here is a sample of the questionnaire the Albert Einstein Healthcare Network (AEHN) in Philadelphia uses when interviewing candidates for a management position. The chart lists AEHN’s definition of eight of the leadership competencies sought in a manager, a sample question, and what the response should reveal about the candidate.
If you have an interview team, assign different questions to each interviewer (e.g., Interviewer No. 1 asks question No. 1, etc.). That way, the interviewee will not be asked the same questions repeatedly although interviewers still will be receiving information on the same competencies.
1. Customer Focus. Demonstrates desire to help or serve others to identify, anticipate, and address customer/client needs and achieve customer satisfaction. "Customers" include patients, their families, employers, community, referral sources, and payers, as well as people internal to AEHN who rely on services in order to perform their functions.
Ask: In your last job, whom did you see as your main customers? How would you characterize their main needs? Exactly how did you evaluate your success in meeting their needs?
Listen for:
Gets first-hand customer information and uses it for service design, evaluation, and improvement.
Considers and treats as valued customers both internal and external users of your services; acts to create and sustain positive long-term relationships.
2. Effective Resource Use. Develops strategies and makes decisions to not only satisfy customers, but also to use resources wisely and achieve positive fiscal results. Might include developing, implementing, and fine-tuning revenue-producing services and/or efficient support services, and reducing cost.
Ask: Describe a time when you didn’t have enough resources or inappropriate resources. Tell me about the situation in some detail. And tell me how you handled this situation.
Listen for:
Takes initiatives to counter downturns in business.
Continually seeks ways to improve use of human and financial resources.
3. Analytical and Systems Thinking. Understands situations by breaking them apart. Sees implications and consequences. Makes systematic comparisons and plans, setting priorities, and identifies time sequences and if-then relationships.
Ask: Did you ever initiate a new program? What was it? Describe the process you went through to justify it? How did that fit into the bigger picture of the organization? How did it fit with the organization’s strategic plan or vision?
Listen for:
Recognizes impact of parts of system on other parts and the whole; sees causes, implications, and consequences of events, changes, and situations on people, systems, work processes and results.
Identifies connections between situations that are not obviously related; identifies underlying patterns, needs, issues and obstacles in complex situations and identifies steps to deal with them.
4. Emotional Intelligence. Understands oneself and other people; perceives their perspectives, concerns, and interests accurately and uses this understanding to advance the AEHN mission and create a healthy work environment. Includes cross-cultural, generational, and gender understanding.
Ask: One of your employees comes to you with many complaints about their work overload and the fact that their job is changing and is now very different from what they were led to believe when they were hired. They feel upset because they think it’s unfair to change what’s in the job. How do you respond?
Listen for:
Listens well. Demonstrates empathy for others’ feelings and concerns.
Understands one’s own feelings and reactions in response to people or events.
5. Team Leadership. Serves as formal and informal leader of teams and groups in a responsible manner that facilitates individual contributions and results in achievement of team and AEHN goals.
Ask: Have you ever had a mammoth job for a team of people to do. What was it? So, imagine that you convened them to explain the task. Sell it to me.
Listen for:
Creates and communicates a compelling, inspired vision. Sees beyond today. Is optimistic. Builds employee investment.
6. Relationship Building: Effectively builds and maintains friendly, professional, and productive relationships within the AEHN health care field and community; builds contacts with people within and beyond AEHN who are or might be important to achieving work goals.
Ask: Describe a time when you needed a very good relationship with someone but found them difficult as a person. What did you do?
Listen for:
Candidate listens. Demonstrates active and attentive listening. Hears people out patiently. Can accurately restate the opinions of others even when disagreeing. Suspends judgment until others have had their say.
7. Active Learning. Demonstrates curiosity and initiative to seek information, learn from experience, acquire skills, and make improvements.
Ask: Tell me about something you learned in the last six months. Why did you learn it? How did you learn this?
Listen for:
Picks up on the need to change personal, interpersonal, and managerial behavior quickly and works continually to improve.
8. Courage. Takes calculated risks and does things that are new, different, or out-of-the-box when necessary, not for the sake of living dangerously, but for the sake of reaching goals. Asserts oneself in the face of odds, and takes responsibility for the outcomes.
Ask: Tell me about a time you took a risk at work. What did you do? What was risky about it? How did you feel? What happened? Would you do it again?
Listen for:
Does whatever it takes to get the job done to high standards, despite resistance.
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