Unless you work in HR, the word ‘competencies’ is probably enough to make you go to sleep. If you work in HR, it will probably be enough to make you spring out of bed. Given that HR play a key role in the interview process, you need to familiarise yourself with it either way.

“Most clients are trying to drill down to a set of competency-based questions that they can measure objectively against,” says one head of HR at a large bank. “Look at the company’s values and extrapolate from those values what their core competencies might be. For example, if a value is ‘client service,’ the competencies might be strong team focus, thinking outside the box, or being a self-starter.”