Have you ever wondered what elements determine whether a person is hired or not after a selection process ?
Surely yes, although it is not always easy to explain it because many factors come into play, not just how good or bad our interlocutor “liked” us during the interview.
Intuitively, most of us become evaluators of how people perform their craft without necessarily knowing the ins and outs of it. Let’s face it: most of us believe we have enough judgment to say how good or bad a waiter is when we first walk into a bar and order a coffee. And the same thing happens to us when we listen to a television presenter giving news or even when a doctor treats us in his office.
All of these jobs, and the people who perform them, are linked by an element that connects them: skills. Perhaps that is why we label someone as incompetent when we appreciate that they do not do things as we would expect.
To find the possible origin of the term “competences” , we must go back to the end of the First World War when, as a result of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, the defeated Germany began to consider why it lost the war, opening an infinite range of hypotheses. and possible answers. An in-depth analysis led to the conclusion that the lack of skills of his army and its poor measurement, if not zero, was behind its defeat.
ASSESSMENT CENTERS TO PREPARE TROOPS
This led to military academies incorporating so-called assessment centers to prepare their troops. The idea was not to limit oneself to technical and tactical knowledge but, in the process, to train them in other types of capabilities and skills that would allow them to take the step of knowing what had to be done and being clear about how it had to be done.
Some time later, the American psychologist McClelland (1973) formalized the concept of “competence” in a more precise way, associating it with what really causes superior performance at work. It was no longer just about accumulating knowledge that can be learned through training, but about valuing certain capabilities that we bring “as standard” such as communication, creativity and planning, to name a few. In addition, skills such as public speaking, improvisation or task scheduling can be acquired, stimulated and developed .
The skills are so valuable that there are many talent selection technicians who take them as a reference. In fact, there is a current curriculum model in the European Union called Europass . The Europass is a European curriculum that ensures the transparency of skills with the aim of providing citizens and potential employers with new opportunities to study or work abroad.
After all, in the labor market, skills are key, especially when they are linked to the higher education environment, as revealed by ANECA (National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation) .
In selection processes, through the interview technique , it is possible to find the person’s suitability for the job or, if preferred, measure how well or badly a candidate can “match” the job profile. of work for which he opts, and which is also usually defined by competencies.
DESIGN THE COMPETENCIES ACCORDING TO THE POSITION
Yes, you read correctly: competencies can be measured during the interview . To do this, it is necessary to design a model that allows us to collect which competencies are appropriate to the position, the level of importance that each one of them has in relation to the others in the group and also how each one of them fluctuates independently. This is what is known as a rubric system . In other words, it is about describing in a simple and gradual way, at what level, for example, basic, intermediate and advanced, the position and the person coincide in terms of competencies.
Given the above, being chosen or not in a selection process should largely depend on the fit that our competency profile has with that of the position. If we are discarded, it will be advisable to reflect on how we should acquire those skills with market value that neutralize our skills deficit, maintain those we already possess and, of course, exploit those that are already consolidated.
We may be more competent than we think in a selection interview, but we will have to prove it.
Angel José Olaz Capitán , Full Professor of Sociology_Methods and Techniques of Social Research, University of Murcia
This article was originally published on The Conversation . Read the original .
