The greatest strength of the United Nations is the excellence of its employees. United Nations use a competence-based interview process to ensure that the finest individuals join the UN squad. Competence-based interviews are based on the notion that past behavior and experience is the best sign of upcoming performance. To put in other way, they want to hear your personal story: your abilities, your knowledge, and your genuine experience in dealing with various situations.
What type of question should you expect?
- The UN recruiting manager will most probably come up with a question about a situation that you go beyond your supervisor’s expectations. So think about similar situations and clearly point out what was the expectations, how you succeeded and what the result was.
- Problem-solving skills are significant in hard times. It doesn’t matter how big United Nations organization is. They face several problems in the field. They will ask you about a situation that you found a brilliant idea to save the day.
- NGOs pick staff who has the ability to handle multiple tasks at a time since they don’t always have the budget to hire a dedicated employee for each task. United Nations is not an exception. They value handling a number of demands at the same time. So be prepared to give an example when you asked for.
Precious tips
- Prepare a wide variety of short real life stories about your achievements. Write down every specific skill to corresponding story. Add positive results or lessons learned from each experience.
- Consider how you can contribute to the position you apply for and United Nations in general. Be prepared to discuss your skills and strengths from previous experiences.
- Specifications in the job advert will be investigated in your interview and you are expected to demonstrate your skills matching these specifications and state positive outcomes and accomplishments. The construction of your response to such questions should be in situation, action, and outcome format.
- Listen carefully, watch the subject, and be as specific as possible. Share information that you think is suitable and related.
- Do a research on the focus of specific agency you are applying at. Get to know about their field and concerns.
- Practice, practice, practice.