Duties-Driven Interview Prep
Dimension: Pursuit · Type: Stage
A method for preparing competency-based interviews that starts from the vacancy notice’s duties section, generating 20 or more likely questions before the interview begins.
Introduced by Draga Paskova (UNIDO) at the Building a Winning Profile from Application to Interview session of the UN Inter-Agency Career Week 2026, on 7 May 2026. Extended in the Mastering Job Interviews session on 8 May 2026 by Florette Niyongere (IOM), Aicha Abdoulhanzis (OCHA), and Tamara Roura (OCHA), who added the two-axis questioning rule, the hypothetical-scenario question type, and a pre-interview preparation checklist.
The framework
The method works directly from the vacancy notice’s duties section. Each duty bullet implicitly contains one or more likely interview questions. By generating those questions systematically, you build a comprehensive toolkit before the interview, rather than scrambling in the room. A thorough pass through a typical UN P-level vacancy can produce 20 or more prepared scenarios.
When to use it
- Before any competency-based interview where you have access to the vacancy notice in advance, which is almost always.
- When previous interview prep has felt too narrow (“I prepared for two questions and was asked five”).
- When you are interviewing for a role at a level above your current one and need to stretch your examples to demonstrate the higher level.
What you need
The vacancy notice for the role. Your BASIC achievement bank, or a notebook with documented examples from your work history. 60 to 90 minutes for the first prep pass; less for subsequent revisits. A document where you can map duties to questions to examples.
The core insight
Most candidates prepare by reviewing their own CV and rehearsing answers to a small set of imagined questions. This produces narrow preparation that breaks under panel pressure.
A more effective approach starts from the duties section of the vacancy notice. The duties describe what the role actually does day to day; they are the interview questions in disguise.
Steps
- Open the vacancy notice and find the duties section. Not the requirements, not the person specification, the duties.
- For each duty bullet, generate three to five likely questions. Phrase them as competency-based interview questions: “Tell us about a time when…”, “Describe a situation where…”, “Walk us through how you have…“.
- For each question, identify your strongest example. From your achievement bank or work history. The example should match the seniority level of the role you are applying for.
- Structure each example using SMART or R-CAR. Five elements, three to five minutes spoken.
- Practise out loud. Reading produces a different quality than speaking. Use AI Roleplay for Skill Practice for repetitions under realistic conditions.
- In the interview: adapt, do not recite. The actual question may not match your prepared one exactly. Find the closest example in your toolkit and adapt on the fly.
Worked example
A duty bullet from a sample P-3 project administration vacancy:
“Monitor specific aspects of project execution, identify problems, and propose actions to be taken to expedite delivery.”
Questions generated from this single bullet:
- Tell us about a time when you monitored multiple aspects of project execution simultaneously. How did you decide what to focus on?
- Describe a situation where you identified a problem in project delivery early. What signals did you watch for?
- Walk us through how you have proposed actions to expedite a delayed project. How did you bring stakeholders along?
- Tell us about a time when your monitoring framework caught something that would otherwise have been missed.
- Describe a tool or method you have used to monitor project execution at scale. Why that one?
Each question maps to one or two examples in the candidate’s achievement bank. A typical UN P-3 vacancy has six to ten duty bullets; the toolkit ends up with 20 to 30 prepared scenarios.
Level scaling
A common interview failure: a candidate applying from P-3 to P-4 prepares examples that demonstrate P-3 work. The panel needs to see P-4-level thinking.
When generating questions and selecting examples:
- For a lateral move at the same level: examples that demonstrate consistent performance at the level.
- For a vertical move (P-3 to P-4, G-6 to G-7): examples that demonstrate moments where you operated above your formal grade. Acting roles, stretch assignments, projects where you took on next-level scope.
- For a sector or function pivot: examples that demonstrate the transferable skill plus the willingness to learn the new context. Bridge the gap explicitly.
For each duty bullet, ask: what would a strong candidate at the role’s level look like answering this? Then choose the example that most credibly meets that bar.
The two-axis question rule
For any given competency, panels can ask the same question from two opposite angles. Candidates who only prepare one angle sound rehearsed when the other is asked.
The two axes are:
- Success and strength angle: “Describe a time when you worked in a highly effective team. What was your contribution?” The question invites you to surface a win.
- Reflection angle: “Tell me about a time when you struggled to work in a team. What was the cause of the problems?” Same competency, opposite framing. The question invites reflection on a difficulty.
The same pattern holds for values and ethics, leadership, communication, judgement under pressure, and most other UN competencies.
The operational rule: when generating questions from a duty bullet, generate at least one of each axis per competency, and prepare a strong example for both. Florette Niyongere recommended preparing 8 to 10 STAR+L stories total, including 2 with positive results and 2 with negative results.
Hypothetical scenario questions
A growing trend: hypothetical scenarios that ask how you would handle a future situation. “You are working on an important project with a tight deadline. A senior manager from another team contacts you urgently, requesting information that would take several hours. How do you approach the situation, and how do you decide which to prioritise?”
The questions assess time management and prioritisation, judgement under pressure, and stakeholder communication. They typically come with implicit follow-ups (how would you communicate with both stakeholders, what if both insist on urgency, what if you cannot meet both deadlines). When generating questions from a duty bullet, add at least one hypothetical scenario per critical duty, and rehearse the follow-up logic, not just the first answer.
Pre-interview preparation checklist
Run through this before the convocation arrives, not after.
- Research done on the organisation, its mandate, and its current priorities.
- 8 to 10 STAR+L stories ready, mapped to the competencies in the JD, including at least 2 with positive results and 2 with negative results.
- Motivation pitch under 90 seconds, written, practised, and timed.
- Practised out loud, recorded, with feedback from one person inside your domain (content) and one outside (clarity for a generalist panellist).
- Mentally prepared, committed to giving your best, ready to take three deep breaths before starting.
- Job offer fully read; required competencies identified.
- Three core strengths and one development area ready, each with a concrete example.
- One or two questions ready for the panel that signal curiosity and homework.
- Logistics tested: link, date, time, audio, video, connection, back-up plan if connection fails.
A consistent point across both source sessions: start preparing the moment you submit the application, not the moment the convocation arrives. UN convocations sometimes arrive with as little as three to five days’ notice, and a saved JD plus a pre-built example bank is what closes the gap.
Pitfalls
- Preparing only from the requirements section. The requirements (education, years of experience, languages) are eligibility gates. The duties are where the interview lives.
- Generating questions but skipping the example mapping. The questions alone are not preparation; the prepared examples are. Without specific examples, the toolkit collapses under panel pressure.
- Reciting prepared answers verbatim. Panels notice. The toolkit is for adapting, not for scripting.
- Using “we” throughout. The panel is assessing you, not your team. Set the team context briefly, then describe what you personally did. Only revealing your individual contribution under follow-up questioning is read as evasion.
- Theoretical answers. “What I would do is…” reads as evasion. Bring a real example, or admit you have not faced the situation.
- Three-to-five-minute discipline broken. Panels lose attention beyond five minutes per answer. The ability to compress a complex answer to that range is itself a signal of senior judgement.
- Skipping the practise out loud step. Reading prepared answers feels like preparation but does not produce delivery quality. Speaking does.
When not to use it
When the interview is for a role with no published duties section. In that case, prepare from the role’s stated objectives and from conversations with anyone you can talk to about the role’s day-to-day reality.
When the interview format is not competency-based (a panel discussion, a case interview, a technical exercise). The method is specific to “tell us about a time when…” questions.
When the vacancy notice is unusually short or vague. In that case, supplement with information from similar roles in the same organisation, the UN Careers job-level guide, and conversations with anyone you can find who holds a similar position.
How I use it
Personal note pending. Davide to fill.
Related frameworks
- SMART Method, the answer structure for the prepared examples this method generates.
- R-CAR, the parallel structure for written application bullets.
- BASIC Achievement Bank, the source of the examples that fuel the prepared scenarios.
- AI Roleplay for Skill Practice, the rehearsal method for practising the prepared answers under realistic conditions.
Notes compiled by Davide Piga. Last updated 2026-05-09.