A systematic process for recruitment is a sourcing model which is organization-specific that aims to find the right fit for the right job at the right time. It is a gradual approach to bringing in talented people who can be an asset to the organization that is where integration of competency based hiring becomes key.
A very complex part of any organization is its hiring process primarily because it involves human resources at the interviewer as well as the candidates end each of whom have different personalities, mindsets, approach and behaviors. It intensifies even more when we cannot answer questions like what is required, why is it important, when is it required, are there any alternatives and how do we go about it.
A few reasons why traditional hiring processes fail to deliver desired results could be one of these or a combination of the reasons listed below.
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- Lack of proper competency profile for a role: It is of utmost importance to have a job competency profile that is designed to define a particular job’s knowledge requirements, skills and expectations for an organization which helps recruiters find the right candidates for the company.
- Hiring for perceptions rather than competencies: Many a time recruiters may be blinded by a candidate’s visual representation rather than their capabilities which tends to pose a problem for them in the long run.
- Unclear expectations from the role/resource: Knowing what you’re supposed to do at your job is a basic requirement for any employee in order to succeed at his or her job. A poor understanding of these tasks can lead to poor performance on the job.
- Inability to match candidate profile with competency profile: When recruiters are unable to find suitable candidates for the job profile it may cause a glitch in the hiring process.
It is of utmost importance to have a methodized competency-based hiring process in place so that it helps to hire the best candidate for available vacancies. It, therefore, is no surprise that most world-famous companies have opted to use a competency-based hiring model that supports a vigorous recruitment process.
Creating Competency Profiles
Creating competency profiles for a role includes mapping various competencies required for a candidate to successfully perform that role. It includes:
- Identifying key competencies
- Identifying the necessity of each competency for a particular role
Let us consider the competency profiles of a manager and a coordinator. For a managerial role, ‘leadership skills’ are extremely important, however, for a coordinator role the same competency may not be important. In the same way for the role of a coordinator, ‘understanding and translating instructions to carry out tasks’ might be of importance, however, the same competency is not needed for a managerial role.
It is important to understand that every role has a particular competency profile, and therefore also has a different assessment criteria. This necessitates the need for preparing a well thought of competency profile for any role before starting the hiring process. We should also remember that there are no customized candidates; however, someone with the pertinent competencies can always be trained to become a perfect fit.
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Designing competency-based interview questions
Assessing competencies can be tricky but it’s really worthwhile to train the hiring managers on acquiring this skill for effective hiring. One of the key lessons here to understand is that past behavior is the best indicator of future performance, as was rightly said by Mark Twain. Competency-based interview questions are designed to let the candidate do the talking.
They are open-ended and invite a response that tells the employer about a real-life challenge that the interviewee has faced and what was their reaction to it. A trained hiring manager can easily distinguish between an answer that has been rehearsed and a genuine answer.
The key to designing competency based hiring questions is to construe the answers correctly and match them with the prerequisite of the role. Questions that encourage the candidate to probe and reflect are usually used to understand the candidate and determine if they are the right fit. The STAR approach may be used to design competency-based questions:
S/T- to create a Situation or a Task
A- Seek the action taken in that situation by the candidate
R- Seek the final outcome/result of that action and candidate’s reaction to it
Evaluating competency based hiring
To interpret answers to competency-based questions the interviewer needs to go beyond understanding the meaning of simple words. The use of the probing technique can help undertake the best assessment of a candidate’s reaction.
Structured interviews: Eliminating perceptual bias
Structured Interviews – Each candidate for a role is evaluated against the exact same functional, technical and behavioral competencies that are essentially decided in the competency-profile of the role with the same importance. Interview Questions mostly remain similar for every candidate.
Assessment profiles can be created for all the candidates, and the ones with the highest rating can be selected for the next round. These can then be tallied with the functional or technical competencies (which are based on more factual information) to take the final decision. Since we are keeping the behavioral skills constant for each competing candidate and the final score is arrived at by considering 3 different evaluations, chances of perception-based short-listing are largely eliminated.
Misfits are bound to be hired even if all the right procedures are followed and the right candidates are bound to become misfits if we do not build the foundation properly. If resources are employed with confused expectations from the hiring managers, they are bound to fail. It, therefore, becomes critical that a concrete answer to deciding how and why we choose which candidate and a strategy to implement it is in place.
By mixing competency-based interview into the recruitment process, employers can identify candidates who possess certain behavioral characteristics that will help in smooth transitioning and hence, be culturally fit. Currently, these interviews are empowering recruiters with the information needed to make smarter hiring decisions and would continue to serve as a benchmark in the hiring process.
References
- ‘How to integrate competency-based hiring in recruitment’- Shruti Verma, 8th September 2019
- ‘Structuring Recruitment Through Competency Based Interviews’ – Megha Singh
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