Competency Tests in Hiring: What Employers Need to Know
What does a competency test measure, which formats exist and how reliable and predictive is each one? With example questions, pitfalls, placement in the process and FAQ.
Door Ingmar van Maurik · Founder & CEO, Making Moves
Short answer
A competency test measures whether someone shows the behaviour a role requires, such as collaboration, customer focus or planning and organising. "Competency test" is an umbrella term: it can be a questionnaire, a situational judgement test, a competency-based interview or an assessment centre exercise. How reliable a competency test is depends entirely on that format. Behaviour-based formats (structured interview, work sample, SJT) predict job performance better than a questionnaire in which candidates rate themselves.
This article is part of our complete guide to assessments in hiring.
What is a competency test?
A competency is a combination of knowledge, skills and behaviour needed to do a task well. Examples are customer focus, collaboration, persuasiveness, planning and organising, and dealing with pressure. A competency test tries to establish how well a candidate masters those competencies.
That is a different question from a cognitive ability test. A cognitive ability test measures how well someone reasons. A competency test measures how someone behaves in situations that occur in the role.
The formats at a glance
|---|---|---|---|
How reliable is a competency test?
Reliability means: does the test give roughly the same result when repeated and across different assessors? This varies a lot by format.
Every score contains measurement error. Never let small differences between candidates decide, and work with score bands. Read more in what makes an assessment valid and reliable.
How well does a competency test predict performance?
The large meta-analysis by Sackett, Zhang, Berry and Lievens (2022) shows that the way you measure matters a lot:
|---|---|
So competencies are best measured through behaviour: what someone has done before (structured interview), what someone shows in a realistic task (work sample) or which choices someone makes in a work situation (SJT). A self-report questionnaire is mainly useful as input for the conversation, not as a selection criterion on its own.
Example questions per format
Questionnaire (customer focus): "I contact a customer myself when I suspect something has gone wrong." (strongly disagree to strongly agree)
Competency-based interview (collaboration): "Tell me about a time you disagreed with a colleague about how to approach a project. What was the situation, what exactly did you do and what was the result?"
SJT (planning and organising): "You have two deadlines today and your manager asks you to do an urgent job. What is the best response? A) You say no. B) You discuss which task gets priority. C) You do everything and work late. D) You ask a colleague to do the urgent job."
Which competencies should you measure?
The biggest mistake with competency tests is trying to measure too much at once. Stick to four to six competencies that demonstrably make a difference in the role.
1. Start with a job analysis. What do the best employees do differently from average ones? Ask managers and look at concrete situations.
2. Describe behavioural indicators. Not "is customer focused", but "summarises the customer's question before proposing a solution".
3. Choose the best format per competency. Persuasiveness is better measured in a role play than in a questionnaire.
4. Measure each competency twice where possible, for example in an SJT and in the interview. That increases reliability.
Using it fairly and carefully
Where in the process?
Which combination works per role is covered in the guide to assessments. How to set up the whole screening process is explained in the best candidate screening process.
Off-the-shelf or custom?
Off-the-shelf competency tests use generic competency models and generic situations. That is quick, but the situations often look little like your daily work and the norm group does not always fit your role. A custom competency test uses scenarios and behavioural indicators from your organisation and compares candidates with your own successful employees. See how we develop custom assessments.
Frequently asked questions
What is a competency test?
A test that measures whether someone shows the behaviour a role requires, such as collaboration, customer focus or planning. It can be a questionnaire, an SJT, an interview or an exercise.
How reliable is a competency test?
It depends on the format. Structured interviews, work samples and SJTs with fixed scoring are reasonably to highly reliable and predict job performance best. Self-report questionnaires are sensitive to socially desirable answers.
What is the difference between a competency test and a cognitive ability test?
A cognitive ability test measures reasoning: how well someone thinks with words, numbers and patterns. A competency test measures behaviour in work situations. They complement each other.
What is a competency-based interview?
An interview in which you ask about concrete past behaviour, often using the STAR method: situation, task, action and result. With fixed questions and scoring it is one of the most predictive selection methods.
How long does a competency test take?
A questionnaire or SJT usually takes twenty to forty minutes. A competency-based interview about an hour. An assessment centre can take half a day to a full day.
Can candidates fake a competency test?
A questionnaire, partly: candidates can give the desired answer. With an SJT, a structured interview with follow-up questions or a work sample, that is much harder.
Summary
Want a competency test with scenarios from your organisation? See how we develop custom assessments or get in touch.