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COMPETENCY STUDIES CAN HELP YOU MAKE HR DECISIONS. BUT THE RESULTS ARE ONLY AS GOOD AS THE STUDY.
In the past decade, thousands of organizations throughout the world have joined the quest for competencies. Often. thev spend a year or more conducting competency studies-identifying "clusters" of knowledge, attitudes and skills needed to perform various jobs. The competencies turned up by these studies become the basis for decisions about hiring, training, promotions, and other human resources issues.
Those are important decisions, and if we're going to base them on some set of competencies we identify, we'd better be pretty sure that these competencies are valid and useful-that they do, indeed, describe the key characteristics we should look for or develop in a candidate for the job in question. A clumsy study may produce an irrelevant list of competencies, which in turn will spawn dumb HR decisions. Garbage in, garbage out
How do we ensure that this whole process gets off on the right foot? To begin, we need to understand that not all competency studies are created equal.
For instance, some studies focus on a specific job description-such as bank teller or pharmacist-while others attempt to identify the major competencies required in a broad job category-say, manager, trainer or salesperson. How specific or generic should competency definitions be? The answer depends on how the competencies will be used and the purpose of the study (see chart on page 51).
Another major difference among competency studies is whether a "competency" is seen as an input or an output of human behavior. In the United Kingdom, for example, competencies are viewed as outputs: Employees display competencies in the degree to which their work meets or exceeds prescribed work standards. In the United States, competencies are seen mainly as inputs: They consist of clusters of knowledge, attitudes and skills that affect an individual's ability to perform.
But perhaps the major difference among competency studies conducted by different organizations is whether "competencies" include or exclude personality traits, values and styles. A list of 29 universal competencies for top management, which appears in George C. Thornton and William C. Byham's Assessment Centers and Managerial Performance, includes such factors as sensitivity, tenacity, judgment, decisiveness, energy, initiative, tolerance, adaptability, independence and motivation....