Hi Shalini,
Over the past 10 years, human resource and organizational development professionals have generated a lot of interest in the notion of competencies as a key element and measure of human performance. Competencies are becoming a frequently-used and written-about vehicle for organizational applications such as:
• Defining the factors for success in jobs (i.e., work) and work roles within the organization
• Assessing the current performance and future development needs of persons holding jobs and roles
• Mapping succession possibilities for employees within the organization
• Assigning compensation grades and levels to particular jobs and roles
• Selecting applicants for open positions, using competency-based interviewing techniques
What has not been written about or explored as much over the past decade are the answers to the following two questions:
1. How do competency-based human resource management methods of defining and measuring human performance impact individual workers? What impact does an organization’s use of competencies have on individual employees’ career management planning and actions in the long-term?
2. How can career management professionals help prepare their individual clients to identify and present their competency strengths in various work or job search situations?
Competencies include the collection of success factors necessary for achieving important results in a specific job or work role in a particular organization. Success factors are combinations of knowledge, skills, and attributes (more historically called “KSA’s”) that are described in terms of specific behaviors, and are demonstrated by superior performers in those jobs or work roles. Attributes include: personal characteristics, traits, motives, values or ways of thinking that impact an individual’s behavior.
Competencies in organizations tend to fall into two broad categories:
- Personal Functioning Competencies. These competencies include broad success factors not tied to a specific work function or industry (often focusing on leadership or emotional intelligence behaviors).
- Functional/Technical Competencies. These competencies include specific success factors within a given work function or industry.
• Competency Map. A competency map is a list of an individual’s competencies that represent the factors most critical to success in given jobs, departments, organizations, or industries that are part of the individual’s current career plan.
• Competency Mapping. Competency mapping is a process an individual uses to identify and describe competencies that are the most critical to success in a work situation or work role.
• Top Competencies. Top competencies are the vital few competencies (four to seven, on average) that are the most important to an individual in their ongoing career management process. “Importance to the individual” is an intuitive decision based on a combination of three factors: past demonstrated excellence in using the competency, inner passion for using the competency, and the current or likely future demand for the competency in the individual’s current position or targeted career field.
Although the definition above for “competency mapping” refers to individual employees, organizations also “map” competencies, but from a different perspective. Organizations describe, or map, competencies using one or more of the following four strategies:
1. Organization-Wide (often called “core competencies” or those required for organization success)
2. Job Family or Business Unit Competency Sets
3. Position-Specific Competency Sets
4. Competency Sets Defined Relative to the Level of Employee Contribution (i.e. Individual Contributor, Manager, or Organizational Leader)
1. How Do Competencies Relate to Individual Career Development?
2. Why Should Individual Employees Map Their Competencies?
Through informational interviews with key contacts which competencies are in demand in their target organizations as a whole, and in particular positions of interest.
Map their current competencies, giving emphasis to those which appear to be in the most demand.
Integrate key current competencies into their resume, along with behavioral examples and key outcomes or results obtained.
Practice describing their competencies, complete with behavioral examples of past use.
Map their future development needs for additional competencies, based on their future career goals and the results of the informational interviewing noted above.
The caution with using competencies for development planning is this - be careful of spending too much time trying to develop a missing competency into a strength. Sometimes the implication may be for the individual to find a position that better matches his/her current strengths.
3. How Does Competency-Based Interviewing and Selection Work?
A structured set of questions is used to interview all candidates. Each question is designed to elicit behavioral examples from the candidate which demonstrate the use of one or more key behaviors underlying each competency that is accounted for in the interview.
A team of interviewers is usually used and they typically divide the list of competencies among themselves so that each interviewer can focus on asking the related detailed behavioral questions and documenting candidate responses.
Interviewers typically ask open-ended and situation-based questions such as, “Think of a specific time when you faced ____________?
How did you handle the situation?
How did it turn out?”
4. How is competency mapping is carried out by individual?
5. What challeenges do individual face in their competency mapping?
1. Define and illustrate the use of the terms competencies, competency mapping and top competencies
2. Describe how competencies relate to individual career development
3. Explain why individuals should go to the effort of mapping their competencies
4. Describe how competency-based interviewing and selection work
5. Recommend a series of steps for individuals to use in doing competency mapping, with the assistance of an experienced career coach or counselor
6. Highlight the challenges that will be faced by individuals who want to map their competencies
I think it'll help u....
Prativa[/b]