The case study
Context
Kilkenny County Council is a longstanding H-Suite client. From June 2025 through January and February 2026, the relationship entered a particularly focused phase, combining extensive competency-based interview preparation with repeated training for interview-board members.
This created a valuable opportunity to work across both sides of the recruitment process. Candidates needed practical support to recognise, structure and communicate evidence from their experience. Interview-board members needed the confidence and judgement to ask purposeful questions, probe consistently and assess that evidence fairly in a local-authority context.
The Challenge
Competency-based recruitment places different but connected demands on candidates and boards. Candidates may have substantial experience yet struggle to identify the strongest evidence, distinguish their own contribution from the wider team or translate day-to-day work into a concise interview response.
Board members face a complementary challenge. They must understand what credible evidence looks like, how to probe without leading and how to compare responses consistently. The focused programme involved multiple candidate groups, different grades and several interview boards over an eight-month period, so the approach had to be repeatable while remaining responsive to the specific roles, competencies and experience in each room.
Our Perspective
At H-Suite, we believe recruitment capability is strongest when candidates and interview boards share a practical understanding of competency evidence.
Candidates should not have to rely on confidence, memory or formulaic answers. They need a clear process for examining their experience and explaining the judgement, action and impact behind it. Interview boards, in turn, need more than procedural compliance: they need the capability to create a fair conversation in which relevant evidence can emerge and be assessed.
Our role was therefore to strengthen the recruitment system as a whole—building confidence and clarity for candidates while developing consistency, questioning skill and evidence-based judgement among board members.
How We Worked
H-Suite delivered a sustained sequence of competency-based interview programmes and interview-board workshops during the intensive period from June 2025 to February 2026, building on an established relationship with Kilkenny County Council.
Candidate programmes translated competency language into a practical preparation process. Participants learned how to interpret competencies, identify relevant examples, clarify individual contribution and structure answers so that decisions, behaviours and results were visible to an interview board.
The sessions combined explanation with group discussion, real examples, scenarios and structured practice. Participants were encouraged to test their thinking, learn from one another and examine their own applications and experience in a new way. The delivery remained conversational and supportive while giving clear, honest feedback.
Interview-board training explored the same process from the assessor’s perspective. Board members considered how competencies should be evidenced, how to frame and sequence questions, when and how to probe, and how to distinguish polished presentation from the substance of a candidate’s contribution.
Role play, practical exercises and small-group discussion allowed board members to rehearse the decisions they would make in a live process. This supported shared understanding across panels without reducing assessment to a rigid or mechanical exercise.
The content was continually grounded in local-authority practice. Feedback highlighted the value of relevant examples, insight into the board’s perspective and discussion of the competencies currently used in the sector. Suggestions for more Kilkenny-specific questions, role-based examples, mock interviews, additional practice time and take-away notes provide a clear route for continuing refinement.
Successive programme groups created a substantial evidence base for review. By examining the quantitative ratings alongside written comments from candidate and board participants, H-Suite could identify what should remain consistent and where more tailored examples, rehearsal time or follow-up material would add value.
What Changed
Across six evaluation datasets, 127 participants provided feedback: 101 from candidate interview training and 26 from interview-board training. The results show strong and consistent value across both parts of the programme rather than a single successful session.
Overall, 94.5% of respondents rated achievement of the programme objectives at 4 or 5 out of 5, with an average score of 4.72. Among interview-board participants, the average was 4.77 and 96.2% selected 4 or 5.
The trainer’s ability to relate to the group achieved the strongest overall result, averaging 4.87, with 97.6% of all respondents selecting 4 or 5. Every interview-board respondent rated this measure at 4 or 5, producing an average of 4.92.
The relevance of the material averaged 4.68 overall, with 95.3% selecting 4 or 5. For interview-board training, every respondent rated relevance at 4 or 5. Written feedback repeatedly described the work as practical, current, engaging and connected to public-service or local-authority interviews.
Training methods averaged 4.70, with 96.9% rating their contribution to learning at 4 or 5. Participants particularly valued interaction, group discussion, role play, real-life examples, scenarios, practical exercises and the opportunity to learn from the experience of others.
The written feedback also points to a meaningful shift in confidence and understanding. Candidate participants described gaining clearer insight into competencies, recognising qualities they had not previously identified and acquiring practical tools for future interviews. Board members highlighted deeper discussion of assessment, better understanding of the interviewer’s role and the value of practising the process together.
The feedback has also created a useful improvement agenda: retain the highly interactive approach while increasing opportunities for mock interviews and role practice, sharpening examples for different grades and local-authority roles, and providing concise materials that participants can revisit after the session.
Why This Mattered
Recruitment quality depends on the capability of the whole system. Supporting candidates alone cannot guarantee fair assessment, and training boards alone cannot help employees articulate evidence they have never learned to recognise.
Kilkenny County Council’s sustained investment connected these two needs. Candidate training helped employees approach interviews with greater clarity and agency, while board training strengthened the ability of panels to elicit and assess evidence consistently. Together, the programmes supported a more transparent, confident and capable recruitment environment.
