Situation & competency assessment

These assessments involve interviewing incumbents and their supervisors using techniques that systematically compare and contrast what works in a job and what doesn’t. Analysis of the data identifies convergent and differentiating competencies that can be used to develop targeted selection interviews and assessments.

Case Study

An entity that wanted to change from having government employee attitudes to having a private sector commercial culture sought a test to pick the people who were right for their new culture.

Competency interviews were conducted with a number of managers and staff to get a list of relevant characteristics. The list was then put into a survey that was sent to all employees, and collected their views about which features were most important. Confidentially, the staff had been identified as having the new or old attitudes, and their survey responses were processed separately to find the convergent and divergent competencies. Also, embedded in the Survey was a personality test, which was analysed separately for the two groups to identify a scoring key that differentiated between them.

The outcome was an evidence based selection procedure including competency based interview questions and a competency based test with decision rules and actuarially derived cut offs. This entity no longer exists in the form it did when the project was done.