Competency Based Interview (CBI) is an interviewing technique where in the interviewer probes a candidate or the interviewee on specific behavioral competencies. These competencies are aligned to the competency requirements for a particular position, and an organisations competency framework.

During the probe the interviewee’s are expected to refer their past experience and discuss how they handled certain events and scenarios.  The scenarios could related to an interviewees experience during his earlier job’s and they could indicate either a positive or negative situation.

CBI is a structured interview focused on investigating for individual competencies required for a particular role in an organization. CBI finds out how the candidate measures up to behavioral attributes required for a particular role. This is also referred to as Behavioral Event Interview (BEI), since assessment of a candidate on a certain competency is based on their behaviour or reaction during certain situations (events) during their earlier work experience.

The belief in the relevance of CBI / BEI comes from the understanding that – past performance , behavior’s and competencies may be the best predictor of future performance. Therefore the process involves a detailed well planned interview where in an in-depth probe is conducted to identify specific events and the candidates performance during those events.