Why Compentency Based Selection is flawed

The model currently used to evaluate and hire talent in nearly every large organization is Competency Based selection and it's a flawed model as it is currently practiced.

Here's why:

The model (as practiced) focuses recruiters, hiring managers and anyone else involved in the talent appraisal process to focus almost exclusively on domain expertise.

Most hiring managers are looking for a hire to "hit the ground running" and "make an immediate impact". This short-term thinking is usually reinforced by a hiring manager's HR partners. We'll cover why a little later.

Here's what inspired this piece: (quick thanks to Linnea Alvord for posting the link ! )

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/01/what-are-you-good-at.html

Ok, so back to the discussion.

Assuming you read it you may be asking saying, "But hey, isn't competency based selection supposed to enable evaluation of both domain *and* process knowledge?"

The answer is that, yes, this was the original intent of the model; though in practice, for a whole slew of reasons (most of them attributed to HR) hiring managers and recruiters only give lip service to a candidates process ability and emotional intelligence.

This is a problem because the end result in the talent acquisition process is that a candidate is selected based on short terms needs assuming that domain knowledge trumps all and little, if any, thought is given to whether or not that resource can scale with the needs of the group and organization.

Here's my personal experience with this:

After I finished my MBA in early 2007 I came to Seattle intent on landing a Program Manager job at Microsoft.

This was a shift from a previous path in, you guessed it, HR.

To do that meant leveraging my process expertise and emotional quotient but highlighting where my domain knowledge was strong.

Microsoft is a benchmark of sorts in the HR community for its vetting process. Folks are given interesting questions, puzzles, etc. meant to evaluate a candidates ability to reason and enables hiring managers get some insight into how a person presents the process they used to justify a position.

My very first interview was with Microsoft Volume Licensing, the function of this group is to enable more purchases of site licenses with their largest customers.

The very first question was a softball.. They wanted me to describe and justify how the group could leverage a subscription based model to sell software.

I was prepped ahead of time in phone interviews in so far as folks in the group *knew* what the root cause of their problem was/is; as you might guess it is that site licenses aren't the most relevant (viable?) model to move and deploy software.

Customers want the option to have some of the deployed software purchased under a subscription based model and at the time Microsoft was resisting that.. (Google some of Steve Balmer's remarks around this and especially his stance on Salesforce.com)

So, as you would guess I outlined how and why a subscription based model would benefit both Msft, their customers, enable more deployment of the software ultimately creating an ecosystem of their products and services.

I didn't get the job.

Why not?

Well, we've got to assume that the other candidates who interviewed for the job gave similar answers, after all it would have been hard to deliver anything *but* those answers.

The answer, of course, is that Microsoft prioritized a candidate who already worked on campus, they went with domain knowledge.

Now Microsoft competes against Google for the best and the brightest (not saying I'm one of those folk ! ) so having a Blue Skies mentality is important, yet, by and large if a person peruses their job postings they ask for previous experience on campus.

Domain knowledge trumps Process ability and EQ.

And, it's not just Microsoft. There are pockets of brilliance in organizations but that is attributable to unique hiring managers that flip the equation, and ask how that person as a resource can scale and add value over the mid and long-term.

Is Competency Based selection a terrible model ?

No, in fact it is a great model if practiced and taught correctly, but we have folks in HR who cling to the "what is right of front me NOW" mentality who see the recruiting process as transactional (because that's how it is metric'd)..

Hmm solutions.... I promise to give that more thought..