success profiles - civil service interview methodology...the civil service behaviours are specific...

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Success Profiles Civil Service Interview Methodology

| 1Success Profiles - Civil Service Interview Methodology

Civil Service Interview Methodology This product gives the approach to take when conducting behaviour/strength/technical/experience-based or blended interviews. It guides interviewers through the process of planning, conducting and scoring an interview.

The Interview Scoring Tool is also available for blended interviews.

Before interviewing, all assessors should complete unconscious bias training (available on Civil Service Learning) as a minimum. If conducting a strength-based interview all assessors should have also completed the appropriate strengths training. In addition, check for any specific departmental interview training requirements.

What are Success Profiles?

The Success Profile Framework is being introduced to attract and retain people of talent and experience from a range of sectors and all walks of life, in line with the commitment in the Civil Service Workforce Plan.

The Success Profile Framework moves recruitment away from using a purely competency based system of assessment. It introduces a more flexible framework which assesses candidates against a range of elements using a variety of selection methods. This will give the best possible chance of finding the right person for the job, driving up performance and improving diversity and inclusivity.

The elements that can be assessed to find the best candidate for the role are:

• Behaviours - the actions and activities that people do which result in effective performance in a job.

• Strengths - the things we do regularly, do well and that motivate us.

• Ability - the aptitude or potential to perform to the required standard.

• Experience - the knowledge or mastery of an activity or subject gained through involvement in or exposure to it.

• Technical - the demonstration of specific professional skills, knowledge or qualifications.

Not all elements are relevant to every role, so the makeup of the Success Profile should be different for different types of job to improve the chances of getting the best person for the role.


Contents

Definitions of the elements 3

The relationship between the elements 4

Planning the interview 4

Designing questions 5

Questioning, observing and recording 7

Classifying, evaluating and scoring 9


Definitions of the elements

Behaviours

Behaviours are the actions and activities that people do which result in effective performance in a job.

Behaviour-based assessment considers whether an individual is capable of demonstrating a particular behaviour and to what degree they are proficient in that behaviour.

The Civil Service Behaviours are specific to the grade level of the job role.

Strengths

Strengths are the things that we do regularly, do well and that motivate us.

There are three elements which determine whether something is a strength for an individual:

• Performance - they can perform an activity to a high capability or proficiency.

• Engagement - they feel motivated, enthused and empowered when doing the activity.

• Use - they do the activity regularly and as often as possible.

Strength-based assessment measures candidates against these three elements.

The Civil Service Strengths Dictionary is a set of defined strengths that are relevant to the culture and type of work that we do.

Civil Service Strengths are not defined by grade.

Experience

Experience is the knowledge or mastery of an activity or subject gained through involvement in or exposure to it.

Experience-based assessment measures how candidates have performed previously and examines their track record. This does not have to be in the exact same context as the role applied for.

The experience being demonstrated by the candidate and assessed by the interviewer must be relevant to the job role.

Technical

Technical is the demonstration of specific professional skills, knowledge or qualifications.

Technical-based assessment measures knowledge and skills in specific contexts, which are required for specialised roles. Often Civil Service Professions have their own professional frameworks that can be drawn upon for relevant roles (e.g. Government Commercial Function and Government Communication Service etc.).


The relationship between the elements

Although there is some overlap between the elements, each adds something unique:

• Behaviours - in-depth insight into capability.

• Strengths - insight into engagement and potential.

• Experience - insight into career history and track record.

• Technical - insight into specific professional skills and knowledge related directly to the job role and context.

Drawing on more than one element, through a blended interview, can achieve a more rounded picture of candidates.

Planning the interview

• You must complete Unconscious Bias e-learning and Interview Skills for Interviewers e-learning before conducting interviews.

• The vacancy holder will have identified the assessment criteria for the role. At interview you should assess the relevant Success Profile element(s) identified in the job advert.

• Decide whether any benchmarking will be applied to interview scores. They must be agreed beforehand and used fairly and consistently.

• Consider how many questions you can assess within the interview time. A structured interview should take no more than 45–60 minutes in total:

» You should allow 5 to 8 minutes per behaviour/technical/experience-based question

» You should allow approximately 2 minutes per strength-based question


Designing questions

Behaviours

When designing behaviour-based questions, you should consider which elements of the behaviours identified in the job advert are most relevant to the role.

An example: The Working Together behaviour has been selected for a Policy Team Leader role which requires working with stakeholders across government on policy development. You have decided the most relevant elements of that behaviour for the role are:

• Build strong interpersonal relationships

• Challenge assumptions while being willing to compromise

• Create an inclusive working environment.

A suitable past-behavioural scene-setting question could be:

• Tell us about a time when you had to deal with a group of difficult individuals or stakeholders who had competing views/opinions from one another.

Some suitable probing questions could be:

• What were the differences in viewpoints?

• How did you manage the situation/discussions?

• How did you ensure everyone’s views were treated equally?

• What feedback did you receive from the individuals involved?

The equivalent situational style scene-setting question could be:

• How would you deal with a group of difficult individuals or stakeholders who had competing views/opinions from one another?

Strengths

If using strength-based questions a warm-up question should always be used first. A suitable warm-up question could be:

• What things do you enjoy doing when you are not at work?

When designing strength-based questions, you should base them on the descriptions of the strengths identified in the job advert.

An example: The strength Precise has been selected for a Policy Team Leader role which requires frequent quality assurance and sign off of policy documents drafted by their team.

The strength Precise is defined as: You are detail-focussed, you ensure everything is accurate and error free.

There are a range of different question styles to assess this strength. For example:

• Hypothetical - If you were required to sign-off every policy document your team drafted, how would you feel about ensuring it is accurate and error free?

• Statement-Based - “I am detail-focused” - how true is this of you?

• Closed - Would others describe you as someone who ensures everything is accurate and error free?

• Open - How much do you enjoy making sure that everything is accurate and error free?

Strength questions should be designed to provoke a response to assess performance, engagement and frequency of use. They are often more person focused than behaviour-based questions.


Designing questions

Experience

When designing experience based questions you should base them on the requirements of the role.

The questions should explore whether the candidate has the knowledge or mastery of an activity or subject relevant to the role.

An example of a question designed to explore experience:

• How would your colleagues describe your leadership style?

A suitable probing question could be:

• How do you know?

Interviewers are free to probe a candidate’s responses to gain greater insight into their skills or knowledge.

Technical

When designing technical questions, you should consult with the relevant profession.

The questions should explore whether the candidate has the specific professional skills or knowledge required for the role. It is often important to reflect context in the question.

Examples of technical questions:

• HR profession - What is the Equality Act (2010) and how would you apply it in recruitment?

• Project profession - Describe a project plan you have developed and used to keep the team on track.

Interviewers are free to probe a candidate’s responses to gain greater insight into their skills or knowledge.


Questioning, observing and recording

Before you start interviewing, it is helpful to agree the roles of questioner and note-taker (which can be alternated throughout the interview). The note-taker should focus on taking verbatim notes and not asking questions or assessing responses.

At the start of the interview you should cover introductions and explain the process/interview structure. If assessing strengths the very first question should be the strengths warm-up question, regardless of the structure of the interview.

Behaviours

For each behaviour, there should be:

• A scene setting question, determined in advance and asked in the same way and order to all candidates. Remember to use questions that are sufficiently broad to allow the applicant an opportunity to respond. There are two types of scene setting questions you can consider:

» Past-Behavioural For example - Give me an example of when you have had to deliver multiple pieces of work with competing deadlines.

» Situational (hypothetical) For example - If you were presented with a number of projects to manage - all of which had competing deadlines - how would you go about dealing with them?

• Probing questions

» These can be considered prior to the interviews but you’ll need to be flexible and use ad-hoc probes, as appropriate, to delve deeper into the candidate’s response.

» Probing questions should try to elicit as much evidence as possible to demonstrate the behaviour.

» The STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) model can help you explore further.

If a candidate does not understand a behaviour-based question, you can repeat or rephrase slightly.

You should sign-post when moving on to the next behaviour-based questions, for example say “now I am going to ask you a question on Delivering at Pace.”

You should observe and record the content of what the candidate says (as close to verbatim as possible). This will provide the evidence you need to score and provide feedback.


Strengths

For each strength, there should be:

• A warm-up (or baseline question) at the start of the interview (after introductions and explaining the interview structure):

» It will enable you to learn more about the candidate and help you recognise how they speak and show engagement.

» It should be brief, for example - Tell us about something you’ve done recently that you’ve really enjoyed.

» This provides the baseline for the candidate which you will use when scoring their responses to the strength questions.

» The candidate should be reminded that this question will not be assessed.

Strength-based questions:

• Should be determined prior to the interview and delivered in the same way and order to each candidate.

• Must not be introduced by strength name. You could instead say “now I’m going to ask you a slightly different question” or “now I’m going to ask you a strength-based question.”

Questions can be repeated, however they must not be reframed, rephrased or explained.

Interviewers must not ask further probes.

Strengths questions are meant to be rapid, allowing the interviewer to hear a candidate’s first, unrehearsed and natural response, so these can be covered very quickly (approximately 2 minutes per question).

To increase the reliability of the scores we recommend including a couple of questions per strength. If using this approach, the questions should be scored individually and an average of the two scores taken to represent the final score for that strength.

The following should be observed and recorded:

• Content of what the candidate says (as close to verbatim as possible)

• Tone of voice

• Non-verbal behaviours (e.g. eye contact, posture and hand movements).

Experience/Technical

These elements of the Success Profile can be assessed in the same way as behaviour-based questions.

Use a scene-setting question and a series of probes to explore candidate’s experience or technical skills/knowledge.

You should observe and record the content of the candidate’s responses (as close to verbatim as possible). This will provide the evidence you need to score and provide feedback.




Blended interview

This section looks at how to structure and assess a behaviour and strengths blended interview. If you are assessing technical skills and/or experience in a blended interview, use the same approach as for assessing the behaviours.

There are two approaches for the structure of a blended interview:

Sectioning:

• Ask all the behaviour-based questions first, followed by all the strength-based questions.

• This allows the candidate to acclimatise to the different question types and avoid confusion over the way to respond.

Alternating:

• Ask alternate strength and behaviour-based questions.

• This might be:

» Buddied e.g. a strength-based question follows a behaviour-based question where there is mapping between the two.

» Randomly alternating e.g. a strength-based question might follow a behaviour-based question where there is not mapping between the two.

• This approach can help the interview feel more dynamic and fresh for candidates and interviewers.

Whichever approach you select, it must be pre-determined and applied consistently to all candidates in the recruitment campaign.

For both approaches, the warm up question for the strengths should be the very first question asked after introductions.

When moving from the behaviour-based questions to the strength-based questions, it is useful to remind candidates that you can repeat questions but not rephrase them and that they should relax and take the questions as they come.

When conducting a blended interview, discrete behaviour-based questions and strength-based questions should be delivered, observed and recorded.

Evidence of strengths should only be taken from responses to strength-based questions and evidence of behaviours should only be taken from responses to behaviour-based questions. Each element should be assessed using the relevant rating scales.


Scoring Behaviours

Candidate responses to each behaviour-question should be evaluated against the following rating scale:

Classifying, evaluating and scoring

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Not Demonstrated

Minimal Demonstration

Moderate Demonstration

Acceptable Demonstration

Good Demonstration

Strong Demonstration

Outstanding Demonstration

No positive evidence and/or substantial negative evidence demonstrated

Limited positive evidence and/or mainly negative evidence demonstrated

Moderate positive evidence but some negative evidence demonstrated

Adequate positive evidence and any negative evidence would not cause concern

Substantial positive evidence of the behaviour

Substantial positive evidence; includes some evidence of exceeding expectations at this level

The evidence provided wholly exceeds expectation at this level

For a behaviours-only interview, scores for individual behaviours can be added together to create an overall interview score, and then a merit order can be applied, for example:

Seeing the Big Picture

Changing and Improving

Making Effective Decisions

Leadership Total Behaviour-Based Interview Score

5 4 3 6 18

Decision making - consensus vs. arithmetic approach

Consensus-based (or wash-up) scoring, where panel members discuss then jointly agree scores, can involve debate, negotiation and compromise. With this approach there is potential for more dominant panel members (e.g. more senior grade) to exert a greater influence over the decision and for valid observational evidence of candidate performance to be underweighted or ignored.

In order to increase objectivity and impartiality in decision making, an arithmetic (or score integration) approach is recommended. This approach requires that, instead of agreeing final scores via discussion, each panel member’s scores are averaged to provide the final interview scores. This is done at the question level and then the average panel scores are summed to provide an overall interview score. Average scores for each question should be rounded to the nearest whole number before being summed. Any pre-determined benchmarks would be applied to the average scores of the panel and resulting overall interview score.


Benchmarking behaviours

Minimum score benchmarks can be applied to behaviours where there is a job and business-related rationale.

Benchmarks exclude candidates and so careful consideration should be given about whether they are required and what they are set at. The vacancy holder must weigh up how selective to be, influencing factors may include the level of risk associated with the job, the number of roles, the availability of eligible applicants and the extent to which training and development is provided.

Example benchmarking rules:

• Requiring at least a score of 4 on all behaviours (showing an acceptable level of capability in each area)

• Allowing no more than one score of 3 or below amongst the behaviours (in recognition that no-one is perfect and some development may be required)

• Identifying a lead behaviour which requires a score no less than a 5 (for a particularly business critical behaviour)

• Setting a minimum pass/fail cut-off overall interview score (i.e. total of all individual behaviour scores) to produce a merit order list. This total score may reflect the lower level benchmark rules, though scaled up (e.g. if a score of 4 is expected in each behaviour, of which there are four behaviours, the minimum overall interview score could be set at 16).

Any rules that are determined must be clearly defined before the interviews begin. They must be fairly and consistently applied and selection decisions made based on merit order in the first instance.

Experience/Technical

These elements of the Success Profile can be assessed in the same way as behaviour-based questions and using the same rating scale.

You should evaluate the balance of evidence against the desired experience or technical skills.



Scoring Strengths

Candidate responses to each strength-based question should be evaluated against the following rating scale:

For a strengths only interview, scores for individual strengths can be added together to create an overall interview score and then a merit order can be applied, for example:

In judging to what extent the candidate has demonstrated engagement in their response to each strength question, you should refer to the observations made of the candidate during the warm-up or baseline question (where they demonstrate natural engagement). Specifically, any changes in terms of the candidate’s tone of voice, non-verbal behaviours (such as eye contact, posture and/or hand movements) and fluency of response may indicate increased/decreased levels of engagement.

These changes will vary from one individual to another, so you should not compare responses between candidates or look for a ‘common marker’ of engagement. For example, an introverted candidate may not provide much non-verbal behaviour but their fluency of speech and/or the length of response may be greater when engaged.

Relationship Builder

Preventer Service Focussed

Precise Disciplined Strategic Total Strength-Based Interview Score

4 2 3 3 2 1 15


A potential strength is defined as a behaviour that a candidate shows clear willingness, desire and motivation to demonstrate, and can demonstrate some capability, but may not yet be fully developed.

A weakness is defined as a behaviour someone does not enjoy doing, and lacks ability to do. Signs of a weakness include a poor response, lack of engagement, going off topic, or other displacement activity.

A strength is a combination of what someone enjoys doing, and what they’re really good at. Candidates demonstrating strengths do so naturally and consistently. They are us at our peak and are easy to spot.

A learned behaviour is what someone can do well/ effectively, however they find it draining - demonstrated because they believe it necessary, rather than through genuine preference.

Learned Behaviour

Higher Capability and Use

Lower Capability and Use

Low

er E

ngag

emen

t

Hig

her

Eng

agem

ent

2

Lower engagement

Higher capability

Some use

Weakness1

Lower engagement

Lower capability

Lower use

Strength4

Higher engagement

Higher capability

Higher use

Potential Strength3

Higher engagement

Some capability

Some use


Benchmarking strengths

Minimum score benchmarks can be applied to strengths where there is a clear job and business-related rationale.

Benchmarks exclude candidates and so careful consideration should be given about whether they are required and what they are set at. The vacancy holder must consider how selective they need to be, influencing factors may include the level of risk associated with the job, the number of roles required to be filled, the availability of eligible applicants and the extent to which training and development is provided as part of induction.

Benchmarking rules might include:

• Setting a minimum pass/fail cut-off to the overall interview score (i.e. total of all individual strengths ratings/scores) to produce a merit order list. This total score may reflect the lower level benchmark rules, though scaled up (e.g. if a score of 2 is expected in each strength area, of which there are four strength areas, the minimum overall interview score could be set at 8).

• Requiring at least a score of 2 on all strengths (showing they have at least some capability in each area, even if their assessed lack of engagement prevented it from being judged as a strength)

• Allowing no more than one weakness (score of 1) amongst the criteria (in recognition that effective candidates can utilise their strengths to compensate for their weaknesses)

• Identifying a lead strength/strengths which require(s) a score no less than a 3 (to demonstrate they have potential to develop the activity/activities to become strengths, when given some opportunity in the job)

• Identifying a lead strength/strengths which require(s) a score of no less than a 4 (for particularly business critical strengths or those with a high degree of risk)

Any rules that are determined must be clearly defined before the interviews begin. They must be fairly and consistently applied and selection decisions made based on merit order in the first instance.



Scoring blended interviews

When conducting a blended interview each Success Profile element should be scored separately. These scores should then be added together to create an overall total score which can be placed in merit order.

Benchmarks can be applied to each element as previously described and these need taking into consideration before the merit order can be applied. Those who have not met the lower level benchmarks should not be placed in merit order.

If candidates meet all benchmarking rules they should be appointed in the order that they appear in the merit list. This should be used as the basis for any agreed reserve/waiting list.

The interview scoring tool will total scores for each element, highlight pre-determined benchmarks and give an overall interview total score. Candidates who have met all lower level benchmarks can then be pulled out and placed in merit order.

Should you wish to use scoring weighting to emphasise any particular element of the Success Profile, or otherwise wish to consider using more complicated scoring approaches, you can seek advice and support from the Government Recruitment Service occupational psychology team.


success profiles - civil service interview methodology...the civil service behaviours are specific...

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