Date · Friday, 8 May 2026, 12:00 to 13:00 CEST
Hosted by · OCHA and IOM
Session page · UNOG learning
Speakers
- Aicha Abdoulhanzis · Human Resources Officer, Head of Recruitment, Communication and Talent Management Unit, OCHA (Istanbul) · Bio
- Tamara Roura · Human Resources Officer, OCHA (New York) · Bio
- Florette Niyongere · Human Resources Officer, Career Development and Transition, IOM (Dakar Regional Office) · Bio
Session delivered in French. Summary translated.
Interviews can feel unpredictable, but solid preparation and the right mindset can make all the difference. Participants will learn the interview formats commonly used by United Nations organizations and other organizations, and discover strategies to highlight their strengths in a structured and convincing way, in order to demonstrate their value to hiring managers.
Key takeaways
- The actions section of a STAR+L answer should take roughly 70% of your time. context and result are necessary scaffolding, but the panel is evaluating what you specifically did.
- Pick the example that is most relevant to the question, not the most impressive or the most recent. Relevance beats grandeur.
- Use the past tense and the first person. “I designed”, “I led”, “I recruited”, not “what I generally do” and not “we as a team”.
- Always explain how, not just what. “I led a workshop using participatory methods” is evaluable; “I led a workshop” is not.
- Calibrate the seniority of your example to the seniority of the role. A junior or vague example tells the panel you are not yet operating at the target grade.
- End every behavioural answer with a result and a lesson. Without the lesson, the recruiter is left wondering what you took away from the experience.
- Prepare 8-10 STAR+L stories mapped to the competencies in the JD, including 2 with positive results and 2 with negative results. you will always have something to say.
Aicha Abdoulhanzis
Aicha gave participants a clear map of how interviews are actually built and why competency-based interviews dominate UN recruitment. She walked through the typical structure: a technical phase (often a written test or, increasingly, a pre-recorded video), an opening “tell us about yourself / why are you the ideal candidate” question that should run 90 seconds to 3 minutes, then 3 to 5 competency-based questions (3 for P2 to P4 roles, 5 or more from P5 upwards), plus a likely question on personal values or an ethical dilemma, and often a hypothetical scenario. She also flagged that strengths and weaknesses, originality questions (“what would you do first if hired?”), and candidate questions for the panel are all to be expected.
Her central argument was about why this format is privileged: past behaviour is the best predictor of future performance, and asking the same questions of every candidate against the same competency indicators reduces bias, strengthens equity, and reduces the influence of cultural familiarity or personal compatibility. Her practical advice flowed from there. Always check the organization’s competency framework before the interview (for the UN: Competencies for the Future, plus the values of integrity, professionalism and respect for diversity); read the job offer word by word and map each task to a competency, so you can build a bank of concrete examples; reflect on your career, what you are proud of, what mistakes taught you a lesson, what challenges you resolved; and then structure each answer using STAR+L (Situation, Task, Action, Result, Lesson). She emphasized that the panel needs context (where, when, with whom), then your specific role, then your actions (which should take roughly 70% of the answer), then the result, then the lesson. She walked through a fully built worked example on resolving a team conflict so participants could see how the structure carries weight. On example selection, her conclusion from the live poll was unambiguous: pick the example that is most relevant to the question, not the most impressive or the most recent.
Florette Niyongere
Florette focused on the texture of an effective answer, where most candidates lose marks even when their content is strong. She gave five practical rules. First, use the past tense (“I designed”, “I developed”, “I recruited”), because the present tense and vague generalisations like “what I generally do” cannot be evaluated. Second, explain how, not just what, “I led a workshop using participatory methods” is a different answer from “I led a workshop”. Third, calibrate the example to the seniority of the role you are applying for; a junior, vague, or off-grade example will not land. Fourth, describe your role clearly in the first person and be specific about your individual actions and results, overuse of “we” prevents the recruiter from identifying your actual contribution. Fifth, always close with a result and a lesson learned; without these, the recruiter is left with their hunger and thirst unsatisfied.
She then opened up the question types most candidates underestimate. On competency-based questions, she split them into success-and-strength questions (“describe a time when you worked in a highly effective team”) and reflection questions (“tell me about a time when you struggled to work in a team, what was the cause?”), and showed that both formulations target the same competency from opposite angles, so preparation has to cover both. On hypothetical questions, which are increasingly common in international organizations, she demonstrated with a worked example of conflicting priorities (an important project with a tight deadline interrupted by a senior manager from another team requesting urgent information). She broke down what is being assessed (time management and prioritization, judgement under pressure, stakeholder communication) and what follow-up questions to anticipate. On the motivation pitch (60-90 seconds, typically asked at the start), she gave a clean structure: who you are (professional identity, key strengths), how you got here (a brief, captivating arc), why this role is the logical next step (link your strengths to the organization’s needs), and your motivation (what specifically draws you to this role and entity). She insisted that the pitch be authentic, not a recital of the CV; written first, then practiced out loud well before the day; adapted to each organization, because the OIM and OCHA mandates are different and the pitch must reflect that.
She also spoke practically about logistics and mindset before the interview: be precise on date, time, link, duration; choose a quiet, well-lit room; test audio, video, connection and platform; for pre-recorded interviews, find an uninterrupted block of time. On mindset: think about the professional image you want to project; prepare for tough questions touching on gaps and weaknesses; concentrate on strengths and successes, not fears; research interviewers if possible; and practice, repeat STAR+L stories aiming for three minutes each, work on body language and eye contact, do mock interviews with a colleague, coach or mentor, record yourself in audio and video, and ask for feedback on both content and structure.
Tamara Roura
Tamara closed the session with the in-the-moment do’s and don’ts of the interview itself, plus the prep tools that surround it. Her do list: listen carefully to the entire question, ask for clarification if anything is unclear, take notes (and tell the panel you are doing so, so they understand why your eyes drop), pause to think before answering, repeat the question back if useful, keep answers concise (no longer than 5 minutes), use STAR+L, focus on your own role, hold eye contact, smile, speak with a confident voice, prepare one or two thoughtful questions for the panel, and end on a positive note. Her don’t list: rambling, failing to answer the question directly, defaulting to “we” and the team, assuming the panel shares your technical background (at the UN there is almost always a panellist from outside your section, so avoid acronyms and jargon), inventing examples (the panel can sense it and you will get tangled up), speaking negatively about colleagues or managers (you never know who knows whom, and the panel will assume you would do the same in their organization), answering before you are ready, and looking distracted (no phone or anything around you that pulls your attention).
For virtual interviews she stressed looking at the camera rather than the screen, having a professional background, dressing as for an in-person interview, asking permission to take notes, and having a back-up plan if your connection fails (a phone fallback, for example). For pre-recorded interviews she warned that maintaining energy is harder without panel feedback, that the system will cut you off automatically when time is up, and that your eyes should stay on the camera rather than reading the question text. On stress she suggested taking three deep breaths before starting, observing your thoughts, and remembering that the panel wants you to succeed; she added that the most reliable antidote to anxiety is preparation, because confidence displaces nerves.
On preparation itself she gave a four-step routine: build the story in STAR+L bullets; check the action section is around 70%; calibrate complexity to the post; read it out loud (mental rehearsal misleads); time yourself; then repeat, repeat, repeat. Get feedback from two kinds of people, someone with your domain expertise to assess content, and someone outside it to test whether your example is comprehensible to a generalist panellist. She then walked through how to use AI as a preparation tool: as an interview simulator (paste the job description and have it run a role-play with 3-4 competency questions), as a research engine on the organization’s mandate and priorities, as a question generator (8-10 likely interview questions from the JD), as an editor for STAR+L stories (does the action section carry the weight, are there gaps), as a way to reframe a real weakness constructively, and as an editor for the motivation argument (does it sound authentic, is it adapted to the role).
She closed with a pre-interview checklist: research done; 8-10 STAR+L stories ready, mapped to the competencies in the JD; motivation pitch under 90 seconds, practiced and memorized; rehearsed out loud and timed; feedback received from inside and outside your domain; mentally prepared and committed to giving your best; job offer fully read with required competencies identified; three core strengths and one development area ready, with concrete examples; one or two questions to ask the panel; logistics tested.
Frameworks and models
| Name | What it stands for | How to use it |
|---|---|---|
| STAR+L | Situation, Task, Action, Result, Lesson, the recommended structure for every behavioural-interview answer. Same family as SMART (Day 4 S6); merged into the SMART Method page as the cross-session interview-answer framework. | For each competency in the JD, build at least one prepared story. Allocate roughly 70% of your speaking time to the Action section. Always close with a Lesson, even when the situation was a success. Aim for 3 minutes per answer; never exceed 5. |
| Why you (motivation pitch) | A four-beat structure for the 60-90 second opening pitch: who you are (identity and key strengths), how you got here (career arc), why this role is the next step, why this organization. Cross-session with Day 5 S2 (written motivation letter form). | Write it first, then practice it out loud before the day. Adapt each version to the specific organization. Hiring managers read the motivation pitch before the CV. |
| UN Competencies for the Future | The current UN competency framework, anchored on the core values of integrity, professionalism and respect for diversity. (Reference, not extracted as a standalone framework page; it is the upstream competency catalogue, not an operational tool.) | Look up the framework before any UN interview. Map each requirement in the JD to one competency, then to one prepared story in your STAR+L bank. |
| Two-axis competency questioning (success vs. reflection) | Most competencies can be probed from two angles: a success/strength question (“describe a time you succeeded at X”) and a reflection question (“tell me about a time you struggled with X, what caused it?”). Documented as a section of the Duties-Driven Interview Prep page. | When preparing for a competency, prepare both kinds of stories, not just the success angle. The panel may pick either, and a candidate who only has a “win” example sounds rehearsed. |
| AI as interview-prep toolkit | Five complementary uses: interview simulator (role play with the JD), org researcher, question generator, STAR+L editor, motivation pitch editor. Documented as a section of the AI Roleplay for Skill Practice page. | Run each step as a separate prompt rather than asking AI to “help me prepare”. Always finish by rehearsing answers out loud with a human, not just with the model. |
Last updated 2026-05-10.