"Competency Questions"

After fifteen years in recruitment, you’d think nothing would surprise me anymore. But last month, a situation came up that reminded me why I keep writing these articles.

Here’s what I’ve learned about competency questions over the years. The surface issue is rarely the real issue. When a candidate tells me they’re struggling, we usually need to dig deeper. When an employer tells me they can’t find good people, I start asking harder questions.

The hiring process is fundamentally broken in most organisations. Not because people are incompetent, but because incentives are misaligned. HR wants to reduce risk. Hiring managers want to fill seats. Candidates want to advance. Finance wants to control costs. These goals conflict constantly.

Understanding this changes how you approach the whole thing. You stop taking rejection personally because you realise it’s often not about you. You stop wondering why decisions take so long because you see all the competing priorities. You stop expecting fairness because you recognise the system wasn’t designed to be fair.

None of this is cynicism. It’s clarity. And clarity gives you power.

So what does this mean for you? It means stop waiting for the process to be fair and start working with what is. It means preparing not just your answers but your mindset. It means treating every interaction as data, not just a pass/fail test.

The people who get ahead in their careers aren’t lucky. They’re not even always the most talented. They’re the ones who figured out how the game works and played accordingly. Not cynically. Not manipulatively. Just smartly.

You can do the same. It starts with dropping your assumptions and opening your eyes to what’s actually happening in every interview room, every hiring decision, every career move. The patterns are there. Once you see them, you can work with them.

That’s not gaming the system. That’s just being smart about your career.