The right people
October 2008
Charities have much to gain from adopting competency-based recruitment processes, says Bob Jack...
Getting recruitment wrong in the private and public sectors affects budgets and the bottom line. Getting it wrong in the charity sector, of course, has financial implications too. Additionally, though, poor recruitment decisions in the charity sector carry a potential knock-on effect capable of posing a threat to the very reason for a charity’s existence, to quality of life or even to life itself.
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! In the same way that taxpayers require justification for how their money is spent in the public sector, those who make charitable donations are less likely to continue to contribute if their chosen charity isn’t using their money effectively.
With the total income for the sector standing at £31bn, expenditure from the sector £31bn[1] and the most recent UK Labour Force Survey estimating that 611,000 individuals were employed in the sector in 2005, demand for the right people is at an all-time high. On top of that the number of people formally volunteering in England is around 17.9m (once a year) and 11.6m (once a month in 2005). 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 source, identify and evaluate evidence from applicants that they match these requirements.
With constant change a fact of life for most organisations, it is becoming increasingly important to select people who match the wider context of working within the organisation. This wider context includes issues such as fitting with the organisation’s values, relationships with colleagues and customers and the physical working environment.
As a result, many organisations now use a competency-based approach to meet these changing needs. What is this competency-based approach? More common sense than rocket science, it is no more than an approach that identifies a detailed profile of exactly what the business is looking for, now and predictably into the future, and measures the suitability of candidates against this profile
Recruitment or selection interviewing is too critical to be left to intuition alone or to an unstructured approach. The right candidate will add value to your team, department and organisation. The wrong candidate can, at best, reduce productivity and team morale and, at worst, 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
More and more organisations use a clearly defined competency framework as the basis for recruitment and selection, performance management, training and development, succession planning, career management and, in some cases, remuneration and reward. In simple terms, the competency framework is a behavioural benchmark of the skills and abilities the organisation requires of its people in order to achieve its objectives. This framework sits at the heart of all human resource management.
The traditional principles of a job/role description and person specification still apply when using a competency-based approach. With this approach, 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 within the job. For the purposes of recruitment and selection, a competency-based approach will provide clarity for both the selector and the candidate about the requirements of the role.
With defined competencies in place, the organisation can then determine the most appropriate method of assessing an individual against each competency. For example, personality testing is often the best approach for competencies that focus on personal qualities and attributes and an assessment centre approach may be the best way to measure behaviours.
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 in employment.
- 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, the organisation can also use the competency approach to incorporate its values into each competency. While organisations in the private and public sectors may choose to pay lip service to their values and get away with it, this is unlikely to be the case in the charity sector where values are such a fundamental element of their whole reason for existence. Values such as humanity, impartiality, neutrality, courage, trust and respect are all definable in terms of a range of behavioural statements capable of inclusion in an organisation-specific competency framework.
Competencies fall into three distinct types:
- ‘Natural’ competencies – personality traits and characteristics.
- ‘Acquired’ competencies – those that the individual has attained or developed such as qualifications and experience.
- ‘Adapting’ competencies – how the individual has applied themselves during their career.
Identifying the actual competencies specific to the organisation is achieved through a number of different techniques including focus groups, interviews, questionnaires, observation, repertory grids and testing.
The output from such a process will be 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 as well as the observable behaviours within the context of the specific competency.
Figure 1: Sample competency framework
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Planning and
organising
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LEVEL OF COMPETENCE
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EVIDENCE OF HOW PLANNING AND ORGANISATION IS USED
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First line management
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2
Middle management
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3
Senior management
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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.
- Competencies help achieve a closer match between a person’s skills and interests and the demands of the job.
- They help to prevent interviewers and assessors from making snap judgements about people or from judging them on characteristics that are irrelevant to the job in question.
- They can be used to underpin and structure the full range of assessment and development techniques – application forms, interviews, tests, assessment centres, development plans and appraisal ratings.
Recruiting and selecting against competency requirements
Once the requirements of a job have been determined (either through a detailed job description and person specification and/or through a competency profile) and candidates have expressed interest in the job, 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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Application forms and CVs
Acquired and adapting competencies are found in candidates’ knowledge, experience and how they have applied their abilities to different circumstances or situations. Evidence can be obtained through the application form or CV, and the screening process needs to be able to 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. As with other selection methods, 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 when using a competency-based approach. This style of interview 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 will never be possible to predict with absolute accuracy how someone will perform in the future after you have selected them for a position in your organisation, 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.
Author: Bob Jack
Bob Jack is an HR and professional development consultant specialising in the design and implementation of management development programmes, competency framworks and assessment/decelopment centres. He is an associate of the Chartered Institute of Bankers (ACIB)
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