Behavioral interview questions for a competency

Draft the questions an interviewer asks to assess a specific competency. Asked to "come up with questions to gauge how a candidate handles X", base models know what a behavioral question is — but they don't default to one. They mix in three weaker forms that don't produce evaluable evidence:

1. Speculative — "How would you handle a disagreement with your manager?" A candidate can

describe the textbook answer without ever having lived it. You learn what they think good looks like, not what they did.

1. Closed — "Are you good at handling pressure?" / "Do you work well on a team?" Answerable

with one word, and the word is always yes.

1. Leading — "How do you stay so organized?" presupposes the candidate is organized. The

question hands them the conclusion you were supposed to test.

This skill produces the fourth form: open, past-behavior questions that make the candidate narrate a real event, so you can score what they actually did.

When to use / when NOT

• Use when generating or improving the questions to ask a candidate about a named

competency, trait, or behavior for a role.

• Do NOT use for: vetting already-drafted questions for legal/discrimination risk

(interview-question-compliance); turning interview notes into a scorecard (interview-scorecard-format); or scoring a resume against minimum bars (candidate-screening).

The rule

Ask what the candidate did, not what they would do, believe, or are. Every question points at a specific past event the candidate lived through, and is phrased so they cannot answer it in one word or read the desired answer off the question.

The four form checks

Each question must pass all four:

1. Past, not hypothetical. Anchors a real event that already happened. Openers:

"Tell me about a time…", "Describe a situation where…", "Walk me through a specific instance when…". Never "How would you…", "What would you do if…", "Imagine…" — those invite a rehearsed ideal, not evidence.

1. Open, not closed. Invites a narrative. If it can be answered yes, no, or in one word,

reopen it. "Are you decisive?" → "Tell me about a decision you had to make with incomplete information."

1. Non-leading. Carries no presupposition and telegraphs no right answer. "How do you keep

your projects so organized?" assumes the trait; ask instead "Describe a time you had more work than time — how did you decide what got done?" Don't embed the value word ("great", "smoothly", "successfully") in the ask.

1. Competency-anchored. Targets the observable behaviors of the named competency, not

generic filler ("Tell me about yourself", "What's your greatest weakness?"). If you swapped in a different competency and the question still fit, it's too generic.

Elicit the full STAR

A good question opens the door; the follow-up probes get the evidence. STAR = Situation, Task, Action, Result. Candidates over-narrate the Situation and skip the Action and Result — the two parts that actually reveal the competency. Pair every lead question with probes that force those out:

• Action: "What specifically did you do?" / "What was your part versus the team's?"
• Result: "How did it turn out?" / "How did you know it worked?" / "What would you do

differently?"

Give at least one probe per lead question, and make the Action/Result probes explicit — that's where a "we" answer gets pinned down to an "I".

Worked example

> Competency to assess: handling conflict with a peer, for a senior engineer.

Weak (what the base tends to emit):

• "How would you handle a disagreement with a coworker?" (hypothetical)
• "Do you work well with difficult people?" (closed, leading)

Strong:

• Lead: "Tell me about a time you disagreed with a peer on a technical decision. What was the

disagreement?"

• Probe (Action): "What did you personally do to work through it?"
• Probe (Result): "How was it resolved, and what did the working relationship look like

afterward?"

• Lead: "Describe a situation where a colleague pushed back hard on your work. Walk me through

what happened."

• Probe (Action): "What did you say or change in response?"
• Probe (Result): "Looking back, what would you do differently?"

Output shape

For the named competency, produce 3–5 lead questions, each on its own line, each with its probes nested underneath. Don't grade the answers, don't invent the candidate's responses, and don't restate the competency name as a question ("Are you good at conflict?"). If the ask names a role, tune the situations to that role's world (a manager's peers, a salesperson's accounts) — but keep every question a past-behavior, open, non-leading one.