Competency Mapping

What is competency?
Any underlying characteristic required to perform a given task,
activity, or role successfully can be considered as competency.
Competency may take any form like knowledge, attitude, skill,
motives, values or self concept.
A very relevant definition of competency is:
Competencies are the characteristics of a manager that lead to the
demonstration of skills and abilities, which result in effective
performance within an occupational area. Competency also
embodies the capacity to transfer skills and abilities from one area
to another.

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Competency groups:
 Technical or functional: dealing with the technology
or know-how associated with the function, role and task
 Managerial or organizational: dealing with
managerial aspects, organizing, planning, mobilizing
resources, monitoring and systems use
 Human or behavioural: including competencies that
are personal, interpersonal and team related
 Conceptual or theoretical: including competencies
like visualization and model building.

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How Many Competencies Must We Have?
Since each organization has its own distinctive style of business
which it holds prime, it stands to reason that each organization
should require different competencies for its people to be successful
in that organization. Thus each organization must have its own set
of specific competencies for its people and these may need to
change from time to time as the organization evolves.
However, over a period of time it has been seen that most of the
generic competencies are frequently recurring competencies across
organizations and businesses.
Commonly Occurring Competencies in Organizations:
• Intellectual:
 Comprehension
Analytical Ability 3
 Innovation
 Decision Making
 Planning and Organizing
 Strategic perspective
• Interpersonal Dynamic
 Communication Initiative
 Adaptability Drive
 Interpersonal Skills Resilience
 Ability to Influence Others Stress Resistance
• Business Related
 Business Understanding
 Customer Focus 4
Competency mapping:
 is the process of identification of the competencies required to
perform successfully a given job or role or a set of tasks at a given
point of time.
 consists of breaking a given role or job into its constituent tasks or
activities and identifying the competencies (technical, managerial,
behavioural, conceptual knowledge, an attitude, skills, etc.) needed
to perform the same successfully.
On the other hand, competency assessment is the evaluation of the
extent to which a given individual or a set of individuals possess
these competencies required by a given role or set of roles or levels
of roles. Assessment centres use multiple methods or multiple
assessors to assess competencies of a given individual or a group of
individuals.
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Five Reasons Why Competency Mapping Is Essential
for You…..
• Companies need a clearly defined organizational
structure to function effectively.
• It is important to have well defined roles in terms of
the KRAs or activities associated with each role.
• It is useful for companies to map the competencies
required foe each role.
• Generic competencies should be identified for each set
of roles or levels of management.
• These should be used in recruitment, performance
management, promotion and training. 6
COMPETENCY MAPPING METHODS:
 Interviews: Questionnaire

 Group work: Job descriptions

 Task forces: Appraisal formats
 Task analysis workshop: KRAs and attributes
Competency mapping at low cost
 Pick up the job or a role that is relatively well understood by all
individuals in the company. Work out for this role and give it as an
illustration. For example, Sales Executive, Production Supervisor,
Assistant HR Manager, receptionist, Transport Manager, PR
Manager, etc. are known to all an easy to profile.
 Work out competencies for this role if necessary with the help of
job analysis specialist or an internal member who has 7
Knowledge of competency mapping. Prepare this as an illustration.
 Circulate these others and ask various departments to do it on
their own.
 Circulate samples of competencies done by others.
 Illustrate knowledge, attitudes, skills, values, etc.
 Choose a sample that does not use jargon.
 Explain the purpose.
 Interview of past successful job holders helps.
 Current incumbent who are doing a good job along with their
reporting officers is a good enough team in most cases.
 Once prepared even on the basis of one or two individuals inputs
circulate to other role set members. 8
Nature of Competencies:
Competencies form the basis of an individual’s consistent thinking
& behaviour in a variety of situations. For clear understanding it
would be helpful to define & clarify them as follows:
(a). Motives: These are needs which are direct an indiv’s
behaviour towards or away from a good & act as a driver.
Affiliation, power, and achievement motivation directing an
indiv’s behaviour can be cited as an example of motives.
(b). Self-concept: This is a person’s attitude toward self/self-
perception/self-image exhibited in the form of self-confidence or
an inferiority complex.
©. Traits: These allude to the physical characteristics & enduring
attributes of an individual leading to consistent response to
stimulus/situations. 9
(d). Knowledge: This refers to the info. a person possesses about
specific areas. Knowledge comprises many factors like memory,
numerical ability, linguistic ability, and ability about spacial
relations, among other things, and is, therefore, a complex
competency. Through measurement of knowledge it can be
predicted what a person can do rather than what he/she will do.
(e). Skill: This is the application of an ability or ability to perform
a specific mental or physical task, e.g., rational and logical
thinking, analysis and synthesis, among others.

Classification of Competencies
4. Central and Surface Competencies:
• Competencies exist at both the surface as also at the core
personality level. The surface level competencies of knowledge
and skills are visible in one’s behaviour or performance and can
be developed with appropriate training & development. 10
• The core motives and trait competencies reside deep within us
and are difficult to understand, measure and develop.
• Self-concept lies somewhere between surface and core
competencies..
• The competencies lying deep within can be developed over a
longer period of time by appropriate job placement of the
employee which will offer him/her opportunities to develop these
competencies for future senior roles.
• One’s best performance is driven by core competencies rather
than task-related skills and knowledge, which goes to show that
selection on the basis of qualifications or skills alone will not
ensure a candidate’s best performance.

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2. Threshold and Differentiating Competencies
• Threshold competencies: The characteristics required by a job
holder to perform a job effectively are called threshold
competencies.
• Differentiating competencies: The characteristics which
differentiate superior performers from average performers come
under this category; such characteristics are not found in average
performers.
Another way of classifying competencies on the basis of their
importance for a job in an organization can be: primary (core),
secondary and peripheral competencies. These can be
quantified as the top 25 per cent level, middle 50 per cent level
and the bottom 25 percent level of importance received by
competencies for a position through the 360 degree feedback
process. 12
How to Identify Competency
The identification of competencies and the subsequent
development of a competency model constitute a specialized task.
If an organization is aware of its competency requirements for
various level jobs, it can straightaway adopt the assessment centre
approach. The following steps will be helpful in the identification
of competencies :
Step I: The first and foremost step in identifying a competency or a
set of competencies is to clearly establish the performance criteria.
It would be desirable to have a group of specialists who are in
agreement on the criteria for judging superior performance for a
job/role.
Step II: After having the criteria, the next stage is to select samples
of average performers and outstanding performers. The idea is to
have two contrasting groups selected on the basis of the
performance criteria. 13
If the size of the population is large, the sample size of the total
population could be 10 per cent of the total population. If the
population size is small, a higher percentage is desirable. The
sample size should be reasonably large to allow the statistical
treatment of data.
Step III: The third step is to collect data about the nature of
competencies which could be done through surveys, expert panels
and behavioral event interviews(BEI). Although the survey method
is a quick method of data collection, it misses out hidden
competencies that may be unique to the job as the data are based on
the questions asked.
Expert panels or focus groups comprise line managers, HR
specialists, customers and outstanding job holders. The panel or
focus group usually arrives at the competencies required to do a job
in an outstanding way through brainstorming. The limitation of this
method is that the panel usually does not arrive at a full range of
competencies and its accuracy level is 50 per cent as compared to
The best way to identify a competence /competencies is through a
behavioural event interview(BEI), which is a form of structured
interview focused on the individual and his competencies rather than
on the task.Through this method data is collected on sample behaviour
leading to success in a role or behaviour during events of frustration
when a person failed to achieve what he wanted. The use of BEI
requires expertise which focuses on thoughts, feelings, behaviour and
outcomes to identify the patterns of intentional behaviour leading to
star performance. A comparison of two extreme groups – star
performers and average performers – throws up the data on how the
two groups differ on performance criteria in a particular job/role in a
particular organization.
Step IV: Data collection is followed by analysis for building a
competency model. The analysis involves a thematic analysis of the
interview content and a statistical analysis of of the differences
between the average performers and star performers. 15
The analysis may finally be presented in the form of a
competency dictionary with behaviour descriptions as per the
requirement of an organization.
Step V: The competency model developed through the steps
mentioned above can be validated by administering the
questionnaires to a large number of job holders comprising
average and star performers. Where the number of job holders is
small, the data gathered for selection or appraisal can be utilised
for validation or updating of the model.
Competency modelling can not be one-time affair as competency
requirements change in consonance with a change in
requirements on jobs. Even the motivational aspects and resultant
behaviour may change with time. The competency model has
considerable value and can be utilised for various purposes like
selection, performance appraisal, succession planning, training &
human resource development where the selector can identify
differentiator competencies among av. & star performers. 16