In the harsh playground of recruitment and retention, secure your position as ‘King of Recruitment’ by using a competency framework. Bob Jack explains how
Editor’s Note
This article was issued in the 11 February issue of the People Bulletin before the current version was relaunched but its guidance is so fundamental to recruitment and retention that I felt it important the piece is accessible in our new archive.
Getting recruitment wrong in the private, public and charities sectors has serious financial implications and can seriously affects budgets and the bottom line. At times like these, poor recruitment decisions carry a potential knock-on effect capable of posing a threat to the very existence of smaller organisations.
Because the financial cost of poor recruitment decisions is hard to quantify, an assessment is rarely undertaken. Research, however, has calculated that every manager or professional who leaves prematurely costs an organisation up to 18 months’ salary!
Employment figures make grim reading. Demand for new staff is low, while supply is high. As we’re unable to fully predict the cost of failure in these turbulent economic times, the need for highly effective recruitment has never been greater.
The competency-based approach
Competency-based recruitment is an evidence-based process that uses a framework to clearly define the competency requirements for jobs and provide the means to identify and evaluate evidence from applicants.
With constant change a fact of life for most organisations, it’s becoming increasingly important to select people who match the wider context of working within the organisation: issues such as fitting with the organisation’s values, working relationships, and the working environment.
More common sense than rocket science, a competency-based approach identifies a detailed profile of exactly what the business is looking for and measures the suitability of candidates against this profile.
Recruitment is too critical to be left to intuition or an unstructured approach. The right candidate will add value, but the wrong candidate can reduce productivity and team morale or even destroy carefully laid-out strategic plans. Furthermore, using a transparent framework like this one can reduce the risk of litigious claims of an unfair or discriminatory recruitment process.
Identifying competencies for recruitment and selection purposes
A clearly defined competency framework can also be used as the basis for performance management, training, succession planning, and remuneration and reward. The framework is a behavioural benchmark of the skills the organisation requires of its people in order to achieve its objectives, and can sit at the heart of all HR management.
The traditional principles of a job description and person specification still apply when using a competency-based approach. With this model, however, there is a need to break the job tasks, outputs, skills and experience into competencies and behaviour indicators to show what will be required of successful applicants in order for them to perform effectively.
With defined competencies in place, organisations can determine the most appropriate method of assessing an individual against each competency.
When defining competencies, there are two main themes:
- A ‘competence’ – a description of work tasks or job outputs: the ability of an individual to perform to the standards required.
- A ‘competency’ – a description of behaviours: an underlying characteristic of a person in that it may be a motive, a trait, a skill, an aspect of self-image or social role, or a body of knowledge which he or she uses.
In practice, many organisations include a mixture of tasks, job outputs and behaviours as descriptions of competence/competency. Importantly, organisations can also use the competency approach to incorporate their values into each competency.
Competencies fall into three distinct types:
- ‘Natural’ competencies – personality traits and characteristics
- ‘Acquired’ competencies – those that the individual has attained or developed through qualifications and experience
- ‘Adapting’ competencies – how the individual has applied themselves during their career
Identifying the competencies specific to an organisation is achieved through a number of different techniques including focus groups, interviews, questionnaires, observation, repertory grids and testing. The output provides a framework of the competencies that are regarded as key to organisational performance.
Frameworks are designed in a range of formats. Figure 1 is an example of a competency defined within an organisation’s management competency framework, setting out the differentiators between different management levels and the behaviours necessary for success.
People who demonstrate this competency effectively:
- Think ahead and make plans to achieve goals
- Prioritise and make effective use of time and resources
- Keep track of progress to make sure things get done to plan
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Figure 1: Sample competency framework – planning
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Level
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Evidence
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1. Line Management
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- Anticipates peaks and troughs in workloads, scheduling accordingly
- Makes effective use of time, committing to realistic deadlines
- Keeps track of time and workloads
- Takes appropriate action when aware that tasks will not be completed
- Translates objectives into plans for action, setting milestones and timescales
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2. Middle Management
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- Prioritises demands and makes efficient use of resources
- Monitors progress, time, and use of resources, adapting plans to deal with obstacles
- Sets broad or long-term plans in place, thinking through interdependencies and contingencies
- Adopts a structured approach to managing projects and plans to ensure they stay on track
- Has a clear view of priorities and focuses on own work and that of others on achieving them
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3. Senior Management
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- Finds ways to get maximum benefit from scarce resources, juggling time, cost, quality and efficiency
- Continually reviews multiple plans to keep on track towards rapidly changing or vaguely defined goals
- Considers the requirements of new tasks or projects to ensure all areas are covered
- Works with clear objectives in mind and channels resources appropriately
- Ensures that operational plans are consistent with and contribute to corporate objectives
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As well as differentiators between performance levels, this approach can provide benchmark data on the current workforce, which can be used as a measure for future employees. The growth in the use of competencies has been fuelled by the belief that past performance is the most reliable and best predictor of future success in the job. Using the competency approach in recruitment carries some powerful benefits by helping to:
- Achieve a closer match between a person’s skills and interests and the demands of the job
- Prevent interviewers and assessors from making snap judgements about people or from judging them on characteristics that are irrelevant to the job in question
- Structure the full range of assessment and development
Recruiting and selecting against competency requirements
Once job requirements have been and the applications are in, the next step is to determine who to shortlist and ultimately appoint.
As with any selection process, different competencies may be identified best through different selection methods and using a range of selection methods is often the best way to design a selection process.
Figure 2 is a guide to considering the use of selection methods as part of a competency-based approach.
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Figure 2: Selection methods
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Application forms and CVs
Acquired and adapting competencies are found in candidates’ knowledge and experience. Evidence can be obtained through the data, and the screening process should identify the competencies against those set out in the person specification or job profile.
Tests
Acquired competencies are best measured through ability tests, whilst personality tests may be more suitable for measuring natural or adapting competencies. It is important to consider the relevance of each test and make sure that the test does not unfairly discriminate against certain groups.
Interviews
A structured interview that probes past behaviours is most beneficial as it will seek responses to questions about previous history and experience. The questions and potentially suitable answers should be determined around the competencies set out in the person specification and should focus on the natural and adapting competencies.
Assessment centres
This method brings together various methods such as interviews and tests, and may help to ensure that natural, acquired and adapting competencies are measured during the same process.
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It is impossible to predict with absolute accuracy how someone will perform in the future, but adopting a systematic and objective competency-based approach will give you the best chance of getting it right. As well as providing a consistent and practical assessment platform, it will help recruiters to recognise and avoid some of the common pitfalls that too often lead to problems further down the line.