10 Types Of Job Interview Questions Interviewers Must Know

There is much confusion and uncertainty about the different types of interview questions, there are, how to use them, and their effectiveness. Even at the job interview stage, many hiring managers may know what they want but are not sure what interview question type to use. This article aims to be a reference guide to the 10 main types of job interview questions. 

You can use the navigation menu above to skip to the section or question type that you want to know about the most, or you can just read this article top to bottom to learn about all of them.

To begin, the 10 main types of job interview questions are:

1. Traditional Questions
2. Structured Questions
3. Competency-Based Questions
4. Knowledge-Based / Skill-Based Questions
5. Technical Questions
6. Behavioral Questions
7. Situational Questions
8. Case Questions
9. Cultural Fit Questions
10. Unconventional Questions

To make it clearer on how they relate to each other, they can also be listed with indents this way:

• Traditional Questions
• Structured Questions
  • Competency-Based Questions
    • Knowledge-Based / Skill-Based Questions
      • Technical Questions
    • Behavioral Questions
    • Situational Questions
      • Case Questions
  • Cultural Fit Questions
• Unconventional Questions

For an even clearer picture of how these 10 types of job interview questions relate to each other, have a look at the figure below.

This Venn diagram is a mental map of the 10 different types of job interview questions. It illustrates where they sit in relation to each other and where possible overlaps may lie. In practice, there may be more overlaps than this chart lets on.

It will be hard to explain the diagram if you do not first have an understanding of the question types. So, first, this article will first break down the question types. We will explore what they are, how they work, some examples of each, and their pros and cons. Second, we will return to the diagram and how the different question types relate and differ. Third, we will explore other special topics in relation to job interview questions.

Traditional Job Interview Questions

What are traditional job interview questions:

Traditional job interview questions are stereotypical interview questions that come to mind when thinking about job interviews. They have been around for as long as job interviews have been around for. Arguably the most famous traditional job interview question is, “Tell me about yourself?”

Traditional job interview questions were designed to help an employer (interviewer) understand a job candidate (more commonly known as an interviewee at this point) better. The answers to these questions are a starting point from which the interviewer can build a mental framework of who the interviewee is and how they potentially could fit into the vacant job.

The why and how they work:

Traditional interview questions used to be the main type of question asked in any job interview. These questions mainly centered on understanding the interviewee’s personality, work ethic, and motivations. These questions give a general overview of who the candidate is as a person and as a potential hire.

Examples of traditional job interview questions include:

• What is your most favorite thing about yourself?
• What are you looking for in this position?
• What are your weaknesses?
• If you had to choose one, do you think you are more of a big-picture type of person or a detail-oriented type of person?
• Do you have a valid driver’s license?

For a full list of behavioral interview questions, have a look at our interview question bank.

Some traditional questions include administrative questions such as “Do you have a valid driver’s license?”, and asking direct questions like these are the fastest way to find this information.

Traditional interview questions are very ubiquitous. In fact, if you are a working adult now, chances are you would have been asked at least a few traditional interview questions to land your current job.

Because of their ubiquity, traditional questions are familiar to most interviewees. This familiarity could put interviewees at ease in an otherwise stressful job interview situation.

Pros of traditional questions:

• Easy to find or come up with
• Good way to start a job interview and get a general sense of the interviewee
• Can feel familiar to interviewees and put them at ease

Cons of traditional questions:

• Easy for interviewees to predict and prepare canned ideal responses to these questions
• Easy for interviewees to respond with ‘idealized’ answers and ‘saying what the interviewer wants to hear’ with no evidence to back up claims
• Not focused on specific competencies required for the job

Structured Job Interview Questions

What are structured job interview questions:

Structured job interview questions are any standardized interview questions asked in the same way and same order for all interviewees in a given job interview round. This is done to inject objectivity into the job interview process. This objectivity and standardization make it easier to compare between interviewees, while also eliminating interviewer bias.

As such, structured job interviews are more of an interview style rather than a specific type of interview question. Another feature of structured interviews is a focus on asking questions designed to demonstrate that the interviewee has a particular competency that is needed for the job or personality trait that fits with the existing work team and organization. The logic here is that looking for specific traits in an interviewee and directly comparing them to the other interviewees is a great way to determine who is the best person for the job.

The opposite of a structured job interview would be an unstructured job interview (sometimes still considered a ‘traditional’ interview), where the interviewer spontaneously asks questions in a conversational style. While unstructured interviews may flow more naturally and feel more comfortable to the interviewee, it means that each interviewee will get different questions and a different experience. Thus, it might introduce bias into the interview process.

As structured job interviews are more of an interview style, there are no specific examples of interview questions to list. To see examples of potential questions in a structured interview, have a look at the more specific competency-based job interview questions and cultural fit job interview questions sections below.

Pros of structured questions:

• Makes it easy to compare and contrast between candidates
• Greatly reduces bias by interviewers
• Focuses on definable and measurable aspects of candidates
• Proven to be more effective than unstructured interviews

Cons of structured questions:

• Can feel too formal and stress out the interviewee
• Will require time and effort to prepare the question set

Competency-Based Job Interview Questions

What are competency-based job interview questions:

Competency-based job interview questions are any type of interview question that tests if the interviewee has a specific competency. The specific competency should have been identified as necessary for job performance. Thus, if an interviewee has the competency, they will likely succeed at the job.

To be clear, a competency is also called KSAO in some places and stands for Knowledge, Skill, Ability, or Other Factor.

Also, as competency-based job interviews are more of an interview style, there are no specific examples of interview questions to list. 

The why and how they work:

The logic of how competency-based interviews work starts with the idea that all jobs require competencies or KSAOs necessary for the job holder to perform the job well. A jobholder with high levels of proficiency in the necessary competencies will therefore perform the job well. This is especially true if they are compared with a job holder with low levels of proficiency. In fact, for some jobs, some of the necessary competencies are a basic requirement to even be able to do the job.

Therefore, a job interview that focuses on exploring if the interviewees have said necessary competencies would be the logical next step. This is what competency-based job interviews aim to do: measure the competency proficiency levels of each interviewee. 

Furthermore, with the help of interview scoresheets and standardized interviews, interviewers can cross-check these competency levels, and determine the interviewee with the highest proficiency.

How competency-based interviews achieve this is via the three main question types that form its sub-groups. These are namely, skill-based or knowledge-based questions, behavioral questions, and situational questions. To see examples of potential questions in a competency-based job interview, have a look at the sections for these below.

Pros of competency-based questions:

• Focuses on the competencies necessary for good job performance
• Able to identify individual competencies and areas of weakness in interviewees
• Able to pinpoint high performers and predict their performance on the job
• Harder for the interviewees to prepare for the interview and create canned answers

Cons of competency-based questions:

• Can feel too difficult and stress out the interviewee
• Will require time and effort to analyze the job for key competencies, before being able to prepare the question set
• Less of a focus on getting to know the interviewee as a person or their personality traits

Knowledge-Based / Skill-Based Job Interview Questions

What are knowledge-based / skill-based job interview questions:

Knowledge-based (a.k.a. skill-based) job interview questions directly relate to the job knowledge or experience that the interviewee might have. For example, “how do you do process X?”. In answering these questions, the interviewee can demonstrate their level of proficiency in a specific competency.

Often overlooked or confused with competency-based job interview questions, knowledge-based / skill-based questions actually form a subset of competency-based interviews. More on this difference below.

The why and how they work:

These questions resemble test questions in school or college, but in a verbal form. Similar to test questions, knowledge-based questions will quiz the interviewee and whether they have the knowledge or skills in a specific area. The closer to a model or correct answer the interviewee is, the more knowledgeable or skilled the interviewee is deemed to be.

In some cases, the interviewee is simply asked how proficient they are at a certain skill, and why. This direct approach can be used as a starting point to see if the interviewee would be forthcoming enough to honestly self-assess their knowledge or skills in a certain area.

In other cases, the questions will ask a more opinionated question where there are no right or wrong answers, and the objective of those is to understand the interviewee’s thought process while answering the question.

Examples of knowledge-based / skill-based job interview questions include:

• Generally speaking, to your knowledge, what are some key considerations when forming a strategy or action plan?
• Describe the methods you have used to keep track of things that require your attention?
• How do you rate yourself in terms of change management skills?
• What work related computer programs are you familiar with?
• In your opinion, what qualities do you think a successful leader should have?

For a full list of behavioral interview questions, have a look at our interview question bank.

Pros of knowledge-based / skill-based questions:

• Can be more objective as there could be correct and wrong answers
• Have a strong and direct link to the competencies being evaluated
• Interviewee answers are easier to evaluate
• Can be used to evaluate interviewees with high levels of competencies, but low levels of real life experience

Cons of knowledge-based / skill-based questions:

• Lacks a focus on what the interviewee actually can and will do in a real life situation as compared to simply knowing the model answer (e.g. not doing what they say they could do)
• These questions can be prepared for through study, and model answers prepared in advance by interviewees
• Differing opinions on model answer (e.g. the ideal process or method is still up for debate) can throw off evaluations of the interviewee’s answers

Technical Job Interview Questions

What are technical job interview questions:

Technical job interview questions are test-like interview questions designed to assess the hard skills of the interviewee. The use of these types of interview questions is particularly prevalent in science, engineering, IT, or other technology-related job vacancies.

Basically, technical job interview questions are upscaled versions of knowledge-based / skill-based interview questions, tasked with measuring technical hard skills (as opposed to soft skills).

The why and how they work:

Some jobs require certain hard skills as a basic requirement of the job. Short of mandating a nationally recognized certification of the said hard-skill, technical questions are the best way to see if the interviewee has the technical knowledge, skills, and abilities to do the job.

Because of their similarity to school test questions and the technical nature of their subject, these technical questions often have a strict right or wrong answer. This is even more so than general knowledge-based questions, or questions about soft skills where the answer can have some level of subjectivity.

Our interview question bank does not have any specific technical job interview questions. However, a quick Google search for “technical job interview questions in X” will be able to reveal examples for technical job interview questions.

Pros of technical questions:

• Strong focus on knowledge and skills 
• Easy to evaluate the answers as they are either wrong or right
• Easy to determine if the interviewee actually has the technical skills for the job

Cons of technical questions:

• Need technical expertise to create and evaluate questions and answers
• Can seem difficult and stress the interviewee
• Only can be used in a technical jobs and for hard skills

Behavioral Job Interview Questions

What are behavioral job interview questions:

Behavioral job interview questions are a type of interview question that focuses on how the interviewee has acted in the past. Typically, the interviewee is asked to retell a past experience where they demonstrated a competency or trait.

As a type of competency-based interview question, behavioral questions are used to identify different knowledge, competencies, or character traits that are both relevant to the job and which an interviewee may possess.

The why and how they work:

Behavioral interviews are useful as they can help find out more about what the interviewee has done in the past and not simply what the interviewee knows. Many good interviewees can explain the best practices or explain what having high proficiency in a competency looks like, but great interviewees can demonstrate that they have “walked the talk”.

In the example questions below, notice the emphasis on referencing an event or situation in the interviewee’s past, through the use of “tell me about a time” or “give me an example of”. This is the crux of behavioral job interview questions. These are used to prompt the interviewee to talk about specific behaviors in their past, because in terms of human nature: past behavior predicts future behavior. 

Examples of behavioral job interview questions include:

• Tell me about a time when you made a mistake at work. What did you do to correct it?
• What was the toughest decision you had to make in the last year? What made it so difficult?
• Describe a time when you had to do public speaking or something similar.
• Describe a time when you were a part of a successful sales process. What happened and how did you contribute?

For a full list of behavioral interview questions, have a look at our interview question bank.

Pros of behavioral questions:

• Relatively easy to create and link to competencies
• Seeks to understand the interviewee’s actual behavior
• Uses evidence from the interviewee’s past to determine their level of competency
• Avoids pre-planned or canned responses from interviewees
• Answers can easily fit the STAR interview answer framework

Cons of behavioral questions:

• Requires interviewee to have real-world experience to answer the question
• Not appropriate for new graduate hires as they have little real-world experience to answer behavioral questions with

Situational Job Interview Questions

What are situational job interview questions:

Situational Job Interview Questions are a type of interview question that focuses on how the interviewee will respond to a given scenario. Typically, these questions will outline a hypothetical scenario that includes an issue that needs resolving and ask the interviewee how they would go about resolving the issue.

As a type of competency-based interview question, behavioral questions are used to identify different knowledge, competencies, or character traits which are both relevant to the job and which an interviewee may possess.

The why and how they work:

The given situation or scenario in a situational question is tied to one or a few competencies needed for the job. Coming up with the ‘answer’ or ‘solution’ to the issue in the given scenario will require the interviewee to have a level of proficiency in said competencies. Therefore, an interviewee who can answer the situational question well can prove that they indeed possess the competencies needed for the job.

Examples of situational job interview questions include:

• You are assigned or inherited a difficult client that none of your coworkers would want to work with. What do you do?
• Imagine this scenario: You are in a conversation with your manager. They have assigned you a task and asked that you complete the task in a particular way. However, you disagree with this method of doing the task. What do you do?
• If you discovered your manager was breaking the company’s code of conduct, what would you do?

In these examples, notice that it starts with a relatively longer scenario upfront, then emphasizes a shorter “what would you do?” question at the end. This is the basic structure of any situational interview question.

For a full list of situational interview questions, have a look at our interview question bank.

When evaluating an interviewee’s answers, look out for their thinking and reasoning behind the answer or how they came to their conclusions. It is relatively easy for an interviewee to name a best practice to be applied in each scenario, but not so easy for them to explain why said best practice fits the solution for the scenario.

Pros of situational questions:

• Uses a hypothetical scenario that is linked to a competency to determine the interviewee’s level of competency
• Scenarios can give a preview of actual challenges and issues faced on the job and give insight into how the interviewee would be able to overcome these challenges
• The scenarios presented are hard to prepare for and therefore the interviewee will more likely answer the question based on their own competency levels rather than due to their interview preparations

Cons of situational questions:

• Situational questions are longer and take more time and effort to create
• Due to their length, situational questions are harder to ask and also harder for interviewees to grasp the crux of the question
• What the interviewee says they would do in each hypertechnical scenario might not always be what they would actually do in real life, making it harder to predict performance or competencies

Case Job Interview Questions

What are case job interview questions:

Case job interview questions contain a long and detailed scenario (a.k.a. the case) with multiple talking points and issues to be considered or resolved. The interviewee typically has to read up on the case before the job interview, then present their recommendations and advice regarding the case at the job interview itself.

Basically, case questions are a long-form version of situational questions. The given situation or scenario is longer, there are usually multiple questions to answer, the time given to go through the question is longer, and the answer may be so long that it requires a presentation to communicate it. The latter point may be so prevalent in some instances that sometimes hiring managers just call this “asking the interviewee to do a presentation”.

The why and how they work:

While situational questions allow the testing of one or a few competencies, a case can test for a larger number of competencies at the same time and take a deeper dive into them. Case questions are harder to process and harder still to answer to a high degree of proficiency. It is a tougher test that can weed out the stronger interviewees from the less capable.

Based on the way the case is set up, especially if it mimics the actual job tasks, it can almost act like a work sample test or job audition. In that sense, the advantages of seeing a sample of work actually done by your interviewee would also apply to case interview questions.

While our interview question bank does not contain any case questions (as they are too long to fit), I found a good resource with links to actual case questions that some employers have used in the past. Have a look at: https://mconsultingprep.com/case-interview-examples/

Pros of case questions:

• Will allow for in-depth look at interviewee’s competencies in multiple areas at the same time
• Allows for a strong test of interviewee’s skills and abilities, and better differentiates interviewee’s skill levels
• Ability to view interviewee’s answer to case questions as a work sample

Cons of case questions:

• Difficult and time consuming to create
• Time consuming to administer
• Not applicable to every type of job

Cultural Fit Job Interview Questions

What are cultural fit job interview questions:

Cultural fit job interview questions are any questions that seek to better understand the personality and traits of an interviewee, so as to see if it is a match for the personalities, culture, and values of the team and organization surrounding the job vacancy.

Cultural fit questions can cast a wide net over a whole spectrum of measures, for example, preferred work environment, ambitions, motivations, attitudes, and opinions to name a few.

Measuring interviewees this way will help to predict their future job satisfaction on the job, and also help to protect or even increase the job satisfaction of the existing staff.

The why and how they work:

There is a saying in HR, “hire for attitude, train for skill”. The idea here is that people don’t change (their personality), but their skills can be taught and trained. If you hire troublemakers, you can’t change their negative behaviors. On the flip-side, if you hire people with the right attitudes and personality that will fit well with the people who will work with the job holder, then you have set up a harmonious team relationship for the future. Any non-performance from the job holder can later be solved by knowledge and skills training.

As an extreme negative example, the best subject-matter-experts are still going to cause interpersonal problems in the workplace if they are rude, obnoxious, and disagreeable.

Oftentimes, the way cultural fit questions are asked follows the same style as competency-based questions; by using (opinion focused versions of) knowledge-based, behavioral, or situational interview questions. This is where some overlap of the interview question types comes in, as seen in the Venn diagrams in this article. Instead of using these interview question types to analyze the competencies the interviewee has, they are used instead to analyze what personality traits they have instead.

Examples of cultural fit job interview questions include:

• Describe how you build working relationships with team mates and coworkers.
• In your opinion, what is the most satisfying thing about working in a sales job?
• Tell me about a time when you had to follow a decision with which you did not agree with.
• Talk about a time when you had to work closely with someone whose personality was very different from yours.
• Imagine this scenario: You are working hard to fix an issue at work. When you have finished, your work team criticized your solution to the issue. What do you do?

For a full list of situational interview questions, have a look at our interview question bank.

Pros of cultural fit questions:

• Focus on the personality of the interviewees and their future job satisfaction than their work related knowledge and experience
• No right or wrong answer, only whether the answers and attitudes fit with the existing staff and wider organization
• Harder for the interviewees to prepare for the interview and create canned answers

Cons of cultural fit questions:

• Answers and evaluations of answers can be quite subjective
• Not a test of the interviewee’s work-related abilities (all the passion and good attitude in the world is no substitute for poor job performance)

Unconventional Job Interview Questions

What are unconventional job interview questions:

Unconventional job interview questions (a.k.a brain teaser interview questions) use unexpected or oddly worded questions to test an interviewee’s critical thinking, mathematical skills, creativity, or personality type. The unconventional nature of these questions make them hard to prepare for.

These questions do not fit neatly into any of the other categories, and in some ways, this is the ‘other’ category for interview questions.

The why and how they work:

The logic is that because the questions are so unconventional, uncanny, and unexpected, they might reveal things about the interviewee that otherwise might go undetected. This is either because the other question types do not test for this, or because the unconventional questions are so unexpected that the interviewee simply cannot prepare for them and must think of the answer on the spot. The latter reason is the supposed advantage of unconventional questions for other types of questions.

As per the examples below, unconventional questions come in five main flavors: Those that ask an estimation question, and test the critical thinking behind deriving the results. Those that are math questions, but worded in a tricky way. Brain teasers and other logic puzzles. Fantasy scenarios to resolve. Pure creativity or opinion questions.

That said, there are still others that do not fit neatly into these or five types, nor any of the other question types, but will still remain as unconventional questions.

Examples of unconventional job interview questions include:

• How many tennis balls can you fit into a limousine?
• A shop owner can fit 8 large boxes or 10 medium boxes into a container for delivery. In one consignment, he distributes a total of 96 boxes. If there are more large boxes than medium boxes, how many containers did he ship?
• Two mothers and two daughters sit down to eat eggs for breakfast. They ate three eggs and each person at the table ate an egg. Explain how.
• You are shrunk down to the size of a pea and put in a blender. The blades will start moving in one minute. What do you do?
• If you could choose one superhero power, which one would you pick and why?

For a full list of situational interview questions, have a look at our interview question bank.

Pros of unconventional questions:

• May reveal traits in the interviewee not otherwise detectable by other interview question types
• Some questions may be so uncanny that it is hard for the interviewees to prepare canned answers for them
• Some questions allow the interviewee to demonstrate their skills (such as creativity) on the spot

Cons of unconventional questions:

• May be too irrelevant or convoluted to actually test the competency in question: Some questions may be too stressful or uncanny that they interviewee cannot think of an answer or misinterprets the question, even though they may have the underlying skills being tested by the question
• Some brain teaser questions may have been widely used and have their solutions spread over the internet, which interviewees can learn and regurgitate at the interview
• Hard to judge or compare interviewee answers and even harder to come up with original yet relevant unconventional questions to ask

How All The 10 Types Of Job Interview Questions Fit Together

The easiest way to explain this is by looking at Figure 1 again.

Looking at the overall view, i.e. the bigger, wider circles in green, job interview questions can be broken down into the supergroups of structured interviews (the current standard in job interview technology), traditional interviews (general questions that interviewers used to use in the past), and unconventional interview questions (which acts as an ‘other’ category for the questions that don’t fit into the other groups). 

Amongst these three super-categories, there is some level of overlap between them, but not a lot. Some traditional questions, that have been in use since ages past, can be used in a structured manner and could measure competencies or cultural fit. However, I don’t think I have ever come across an interview question that can neatly fit into all categories (but there could always be one out there).

The next level of focus is in the supergroup of structured interviews, as this group now makes up the bulk of modern interview questions. The main goal of structured interviews, as mentioned above, is to test if the candidate has the right cultural fit or competencies for the job in a standardized manner. This neatly makes up its two main subcategories of cultural fit and competency-based interview questions, which are designed to measure their namesakes.

In the latter subcategory, competency-based interview questions, this subcategory can be broken down even further in the three stable question types of structured interviews in general. These are knowledge-based/skill-based, behavioral, and situational questions. As explained individually above, each type has its own way of testing for competencies in the interviewee. There may be points where these three different methods overlap, but they are usually rather distinct. Knowledge-based/skill-based questions ask about a piece of knowledge or skill directly, behavioral questions ask about past experience, and situational questions ask about a hypothetical situation.

Furthermore, knowledge-based/skill-based and situational question types also come with specialized versions of themselves. Technical questions are specialized versions of knowledge-based/skill-based questions, and case questions are specialized long-form versions of situational questions.

Going back up a level to the former subcategory of cultural fit questions, these sit in a slightly strange spot. Although conceptually cultural fit questions sit a subcategory of their own, practically speaking, tests of cultural fit use behavioral and situational (similar to competency-based questions), and sometimes even traditional types of questions. These are where its overlaps occur.

And there you have it. All the 10 types of job interview questions laid out and explained.

If you have read this article, you probably want to become better at job interviews. See our guide on how to become a better job interviewer here.

Below, we will explore more specialized topics on interview questions, including comparisons between two question types, question types not mentioned above, and common misconceptions.

What types of job interview questions should you use?

Interview question styles have changed, come in style, and improved over the years. However, there is now a general consensus among HR professionals that structured interviews should be used to measure competencies or cultural fit of the interviewees, and that the actual questions should be behavioral type questions.

If this confuses you, I have highlighted this in the chart below. This should show you where most of your questions should be coming from / what most of your questions should be.

This is not to say that you cannot use the other types of interview questions. In reality, most job interviews are a mix of different interview question types. You could use a few traditional questions to open up the interview and to warm up the interviewee, then switch to the main bulk of structured interview questions, and maybe even sprinkle in an unconventional question or two just to keep things interesting.

For more on learning how to use job interview questions effectively, see my guide on this here.

Other Notes On Other Job Interview Question Topics

Notes On Interview Question Type Versus Interview Type

Short answer: Interview question types specify how an interview question is asked and interview types (or styles) specify the overall objective of the interview.

Long answer for your curiosity:

Many people, from the layman to the recruitment specialist, have many different interpretations and perspectives of what the definitions of interview types and interview question types mean. Some think the two terms can be used interchangeably, and some think not. Whatever your background, or perspective, let us find some common ground by using figure 1 as a base and referring to the terms in it.

Out of the 10 interview question types listed in this article and in figure 1, 7 of them are actually types of job interview questions. These are traditional, knowledge-based / skill-based, technical, behavioral, situational, case, and unconventional questions. These 7 have different specifications in asking a question and the type of answers that should come back in return. You can read more about these specifications in their breakdowns above.

As for the remaining 3 items in figure 1, structured, competency-based, and cultural fit job interviews, are purely interview styles rather than actual specifications of questions. The point of difference is that these interview styles can be seen as an overarching goal of the interview. Structural interviews aim to standardize the asking of the interview questions and the interview process in general. Competency-based interviews aim to measure specific competencies that are necessary for the job. Cultural fit interviews aim to measure how well the attitudes of the interviewee align with the attitudes and culture of the immediate work team and wider organization surrounding the job. These do not specify how the interview question is asked, but merely what the broader objective of the interview should be.

Don’t forget that some of these interview types are not mutually exclusive, and can exist and overlap together in the same interview process.

Now for the confusing part: some interview question types are considered as an interview style of their own. 2 examples come to mind:

Unstructured interviews, while not listed in figure 1, are synonymous with traditional interview questions to some people. Unstructured interviews are the exact opposite of structured interviews, where the interviewer has no list of interview questions prepared and asks questions in a conversational style. Because of the conversational nature of the interview, interviewers mostly end up asking traditional questions as they are familiar and easy to think up and ask. This is the basis of how the two are linked together; i.e. unstructured interviews are almost always full of traditional interview questions.  However, it should be noted that the opposite is not true. Just because an interview consists entirely of traditional interview questions, it does not make it an unstructured interview, as long as the questions are prepared in advance.

Competency-based behavioral interviews (CBBI), as fancy as it might sound, is simply an interview made up of only behavioral interview questions. Proponents of CBBI say that this is a special interview style that is focused on specific competencies for the job, but I think that all behavioral interview questions need to focus on a specific competency to begin with. So, in a way, CBBI is just behavioral interview questions becoming an interview style of its own.

I think these terms will continue to be used interchangeably and be mixed with each other. In fact, knowing the difference might not really be that important. The main things you should be aware of for every interview are what the broader interview is trying to achieve, what each individual interview question is trying to achieve, and how these two fit together.

Competency-Based vs Knowledge-Based / Skill-Based Job Interview Questions

While the words competency-based and knowledge-based / skill-based all sound similar, they actually have different technical meanings in the realm of Human Resources (HR). Allow me to break down all the specific terms here.

In HR, knowledge means an understanding of a subject through study (e.g. mechanical engineering), skills mean practical capabilities needed to do a task (e.g. writing). Additionally, there is also the term ‘abilities’, which means stable characteristics that are related to cognition, sensory input, physical capabilities (e.g. reaction time). These three, along with ‘other factors’, which are any traits that don’t fit into the three, come together to form the acronym KSAOs. Every job will have knowledge, skills, abilities, and other factors (KSAOs) that are necessary for the job.

So where does ‘competency’ come in? The simple answer is that competency or competencies is just another name for KSAOs. So, a competency could be any knowledge, skill, ability, or other factor that is required for the job. I.e. competency is a super-category of the sub-categories of knowledge and skills. (This is mirrored in figure 1.)

Therefore, in relation to interview questions, competency-based interview questions are just any question that tests for a KSAO. It could be testing for a skill or something (like a personality trait) that counts as an ‘other factor’. It could also use any style of question, whether it is asking for past experience, or if it is directly asking if the interviewee has the skill in question.  Whereas a knowledge-based or skill-based job interview question is a specific type of question that directly tests the interviewee if they have the knowledge or skill in question, and to what degree.

Difference Between Behavioral And Situational Interview Questions

Behavioral and situational interview questions are similar in the sense that they both ask about situations where an interviewee could demonstrate a competency. The difference is that the former asks about a situation from the interviewee’s past, and the latter asks about a hypothetical situation.

Performance-Based Job Interview Questions

Despite the technical sounding name and premise of predicting future job performance and behavior, performance-based job interview questions are really the same thing as behavioral interview questions. The style of asking about a past experience is the same, the expected answer format is the same, and the premise of “the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior” is the same.

More information on behavioral interview questions can be found above.

Values-Based Job Interview Questions

Despite the wholesome sounding name and premise of selecting candidates with the ‘right’ values, values-based job interview questions are really the same thing as cultural-fit interview questions. Ultimately, both are trying to look for attitudes, beliefs, and personal traits in the interviewee that will work well or are desirable in the employing organization.

More information on cultural-fit interview questions can be found above.

Illegal Job Interview Questions

Illegal job interview questions are any interview questions that ask the interviewee for legally protected and private information or information not related to job performance that could potentially bias and unfairly discriminate against certain people groups.

This section on illegal job interview questions should deserve it’s own article due to the complexities and importance of the topic. A breakdown of legal and illegal questions can be found here.

One thing to note when looking at the list of question types on this article and in figure 1 is that any type of question on this list can potentially turn into an illegal question once it starts asking for protected information or potentially discriminatory information. So be aware of what you are asking, and not just how you are asking for it.

This article is not legal advice, and you should seek professional legal advice from a certified employment lawyer. However, the bottom line here is that you should know what illegal job interview questions are, and that you are never to use them.

Sources

• https://blog.psionline.com/talent/bid/196265/past-behavior-is-the-best-predictor-of-future-behavior
• https://mconsultingprep.com/case-interview-examples/
• https://www.betterteam.com/illegal-interview-questions