Competency Based Assessments

Competency Based Assessments - SECOND EDITION - ISBN 978-0-9953051-1-3

Preface                                                                                                                         5

Chapter 1 – Conducting Competency Based Assessments                   7

Chapter 2 – Building an Assessment Development center                     13

Chapter 3 – Behavioral Competency Dictionary                                          17

Chapter 4 – Assessments Tools Inventory                                                     21

Chapter 5 – CBA Methodology Workshop                                                   203

Authors Profile                                                                                                            243

Organizations invest enormous amounts of time and money in recruiting, developing, promoting, and retaining people. Yet one fundamental question continues to challenge leaders, human resource professionals, recruiters, and assessment practitioners: how do we know what a person can actually do, how they are likely to behave, what they are capable of learning, and whether they possess the potential required for future responsibilities? Qualifications provide evidence of education.

Experience provides evidence of exposure. Interviews provide impressions. Performance provides evidence of what has already been achieved. But none of these, by themselves, provides a sufficiently comprehensive understanding of the competencies that enable an individual to perform effectively in a particular role, adapt to changing circumstances, work with others, exercise judgment, lead people, solve problems, and create value.

Competency Based Assessments addresses this fundamental challenge by placing competency at the centre of the assessment process. The concept of competency has evolved considerably over the past several decades. What began largely as an alternative to traditional intelligence and personality based approaches to selection has developed into a comprehensive framework for understanding human capability at work. Competencies can provide a common language for recruitment, selection, assessment, development, performance management, career planning, succession, leadership development, and talent management. When properly defined and assessed, they allow organizations to move beyond general impressions of people and examine the behaviours, capabilities, knowledge, skills, motives, values, and attributes that are relevant to actual organizational performance.

This book examines competency based assessment not simply as a testing exercise but as a strategic process for understanding talent. At its heart is a deceptively simple proposition: if organizations know what successful performance requires, they should be able to define the competencies associated with that performance, observe evidence of those competencies, assess the quality and consistency of that evidence, and use the resulting information to make better talent decisions. Putting this proposition into practice, however, requires considerably more than preparing a list of competencies and asking interview questions.

Effective competency based assessment requires clarity about the job, the organization, the operating environment, the expected outcomes, the behavioural indicators of success, the level of proficiency required, the assessment methodology, the assessors, the evidence collected, and the way evidence is integrated into an overall judgment.

The book explores the entire assessment architecture, examining how competencies can be identified, defined, organized, mapped, measured, and translated into observable behavioural evidence. It considers competency dictionaries, competency frameworks, behavioural indicators, proficiency levels, competency profiles, job competency models, role based assessment, and the relationship between competencies and organizational strategy.

Particular attention is given to the distinction between knowing, doing, behaving, and having the potential to perform at a higher level. A person may possess extensive knowledge but be unable to apply it effectively. Another may demonstrate strong technical skills but lack the interpersonal competencies required for leadership. Someone else may currently perform adequately but show exceptional learning agility and potential for significantly greater responsibility.

Competency based assessment provides a means of examining these distinctions systematically rather than allowing them to disappear within a conventional interview or résumé review.