|
You may know specialists whose expertise is beyond question but who are difficult to work with. The likeliest explanation is that their behavioural competencies – also called soft skills – are underdeveloped. They are an asset as valuable as knowledge and professional experience.
What are behavioural competencies? How can they be put into a framework that can be measured? Read on to clear up any doubts.
Recognising and assessing competencies is no simple matter in practice. This is where behavioural indicators help. They are specific, observable behaviours or actions. They show that a person has particular behavioural skills.
Behavioural competencies – what are they?
Behavioural competencies can be defined as a set of social, emotional and cognitive skills that shape how someone handles tasks, works with others, communicates and responds to change. They differ significantly from hard skills, which are tied to specific technical knowledge.
In HR, behavioural competencies are increasingly valued, because they play an important part in building strong teams and managing effectively. Developing them in employees improves the atmosphere at work, raises productivity and encourages innovation.
For people looking to change career, work on behavioural competencies can form part of career coaching.
Behavioural competencies – examples
Examples of behavioural competencies include:
- teamwork,
- communication,
- flexibility,
- time management,
- coping with stress,
- empathy.
These skills matter in a wide range of professional settings and help employees adapt to changing conditions at work.
In the context of managing a team, the following competencies are also extremely valuable:
- leadership,
- motivating others,
- resolving conflict.
They allow leaders to build strong, committed teams capable of reaching ambitious goals. You are probably now wondering how to assess the soft skills of a candidate or of an employee applying for promotion. That kind of assessment differs from checking technical knowledge, where a test or a practical exercise will do. What does recruitment look like when behavioural competencies are being assessed? Here is the answer.
How do you assess a candidate’s behavioural competencies?
There are several methods of assessing behavioural competencies in recruitment. They help recruiters understand how a candidate will cope in real situations at work.
One is the behavioural interview, in which the questions target a particular competency and the behaviours associated with it. It is very important that it be conducted by people with the right training: without a grounding in psychology, the interpretation can go wrong, making the interview’s predictive value low and the tool itself ineffective.
Another is an assessment centre session, which allows candidates to be observed during tasks that simulate real working conditions. This gives a fuller picture of a candidate’s behavioural competencies, including how they collaborate and how they handle stress.
Here, too, several conditions must be met: the session should involve trained assessors with an appropriate background in psychology. It is also essential to prepare, beforehand, a competency profile of the ideal candidate to serve as the benchmark for assessment.
Behavioural indicators – an example
Recognising and assessing competencies is no simple matter in practice. This is where behavioural indicators help. They are specific, observable behaviours or actions. They show that a person has particular behavioural skills.
For instance, an indicator of effective communication (itself a competency) might be the ability to express ideas clearly, active listening, or an effective exchange of information.
Once the behavioural indicators are set, a useful tool for establishing whether someone meets them is the behavioural interview. This involves asking the candidate to recount a situation or event from the past. You then ask about their reactions and the actions they took, and about the results and what they would take from it in future. Importantly, you should not ask everything at once. Questions can follow the funnel method (open, probing and closed questions) or the STAR method (S – situation, T – task, A – action, R – result).
Why assess behavioural competencies during recruitment?
Assessing behavioural competencies during recruitment matters for several reasons, among them:
- Time saved – defining behavioural competencies makes it possible to decide faster during a recruitment process and to avoid poor choices.
- Money saved – checking candidates’ behavioural competencies reduces the risk of costly mistakes, such as investing in the wrong people or having to run the process again.
- The behavioural dimension – poor recruitment decisions often lead to frustration, among employees and management alike.
In short, behavioural competencies, defined through specific observable indicators, are the foundation for building effective teams – teams that not only handle technical work well but can also collaborate, communicate and adapt to a changing environment. That is why they are worth taking into account when recruiting.
