The holidays are here again, and among other things, that means everyone is making lists. Don’t worry – the assessment business hasn’t advanced to the point that we can reliably determine who’s been naughty and who’s been nice. And even if we could, I’m sure the EEOC would open a North Pole office and closely monitor any findings.

We can offer a lot of other things. In working with HR professionals, one finds that a lot of people are looking for job competencies as a stocking stuffer. It usually goes something like this: "I am a recruiter for XYZ organization, I’ve been good all year and followed the Uniform Guidelines, and I’d like a competency list for such-and-such job." That may sound reasonable, but at this point an elf always takes the recruiter aside to quietly deliver the bad news.

Competencies for the Holidays?
So what’s so hard about listing job competencies? If you’re still wondering what the problem might be, think about the following questions before you start looking under the tree:

• Is your organization identical to everyone else's organization?
• Do you sell, make, or distribute identical products and services?
• Do you call on identical customers in identical markets?
• Do all your employees perform identical tasks and activities?
• Is your organization's business plan the same as everyone else's?

An organization’s size and reputation are no guarantee of quality in this area. For example, I once worked with a world leader in marketing. Their HR department had no less than four competency lists, each totally unworkable – one for executives, one for HR people, one for trainers, and one for everyone else. The authors of these had worked with their own consultants and had their own ideas (and definitions) of competencies. It was a mess.

The lesson? A competency list you develop on your own will certainly be no worse, and probably a whole lot better, than one you get from somewhere else.

Competency Definitions
I won't make up my own definition; Merriam-Webster's is good enough for me. M-W says the word "competent" came into the English language in the 16th century, and can mean proper, able, qualified, adequate, or functional. Its meaning in the modern workplace is exactly the same as that of the Latin verb it’s derived from: “competere,” “to be equal,” as in “to be equal to the job.”

Now, the big question: What specific competencies does each job in your organization require? Don't know? Well, neither will anyone outside the organization.

Hopefully, I am making it clear that "outside" lists, if they are any good at all, are usually pitifully inadequate for organizationally specific jobs. The only good competencies are the competencies your organization needs to accomplish its business plan. If you don't know what these are, your company is probably confused about what it wants to accomplish (if it’s any consolation, your competitors are probably confused, too). In many respects, "business organization" is a total oxymoron.

Job-Specific Competencies
Competencies are developed job by job. They might have some overlap in name (e.g., ability to learn and apply new information), but they can be significantly different in meaning (e.g., ability to learn and apply new call center scripts, new statistical principles, or new marketing strategies). Because developing a comprehensive list of job-specific competencies would require knowing every job task in every organization — and being willing to change the competency list with every change in the job — it is easier to work from a core set of applicant skills.

Measuring Competencies
This is a subtle point, but an important one. If two people come to the same conclusion about whether an applicant has a job competency, either the measurement system or the competency is worthless. For example, I can measure a person's "ability to learn" using a pencil and paper test. High scores indicate more "ability to learn" and low scores indicate less. But how do I measure a person's "leadership" or "business acumen?”

Each of these so-called competencies is a moving target. Take, for example, "leadership." Even if you can get two people to agree on one definition, leadership changes with time, with the leader, and with the followers. Not only is leadership a complicated combination of activities that include giving clear directions (i.e., communication and analysis), following up (i.e., planning), coaching (i.e., coaching), and evaluation (i.e., judgment), but leadership also depends on a host of internal and external factors.

A "good" competency is one that is observable, measurable, realistic, time-bound and job-related. Using "fuzzy" competencies like leadership and business acumen may initially sound attractive, but I will guarantee that employees will eventually get frustrated and angry, and wind up criticizing HR for installing yet another ill-founded program-of-the-month. Never seen it fail...to happen .

Executives Know Best?
Sure. And politicians care more about you than they care about themselves. The incompetence rate for managers is estimated to be somewhere between 75% and 90% — and this is the audience who signs off on HR initiatives. (I wouldn't expect the majority of managers to become thought-leaders anytime soon). Managers often actively resist the most solid efforts to build effective HR systems.

I once tried to convince an exceedingly dull VP of HR why she should test new employees for learning ability. Although her company lost about a million dollars each year on training "drop-outs," she refused to make a decision. Good thing this company had enough money to waste a cool million every year, because their VP was incompetent.

How About a List of Interview Questions?
Sheesh! Coal in your stocking! That’s worse than asking for a list of generic competencies: if an organization doesn’t have a solid idea about the competencies it needs, then what good are a list of questions?

Here is, in fact, the secret to good hiring (pass it on):

• Know the competencies you need by doing a job analysis (interview job holders, managers, and visionaries).
• Be sure the competencies are measurable and know how to measure them.
• Build interview questions around the competencies.
• Only use behavioral or situational interview techniques to minimize applicant fibbing and thoroughly cover the job. ("What would you do if...?" questions are NOT simulations.)
• Use simulations, case studies, and exercises to supplement interview data when the job is critical (managers, professionals, and so forth).

Sickening Conclusion
Bad hiring is easy. Find a warm body. Ask questions. Get pleasant answers. Hire. Fret about performance differences. Search for better questions. Repeat. Good hiring is hard.

I hear it all the time after I do all the work necessary for a job analysis. When I present the client with a list of competencies necessary to do the job (remember, my lists are totally based on what job experts say it takes to do the job), the most frequent response I get from HR is, "Wow! That's a lot of skills. We don't have that much time. Besides, how will we ever find those kind of people?"

Think about it. I just told HR what it takes to do a job based on data supplied by their own people, and HR responds by complaining that finding people with job competencies will make their job harder! Can you imagine? This would be like an Air Force recruiter hiring street people to fly jets because they are easier to recruit. How many fiery crashes do you think this strategy would produce?

Recruiting done poorly can cost as much as 50% of payroll every year. And good recruiting is worth nearly any cost – recruiting can have more impact on profitability than any other single HR intervention. But it takes work and perseverance. There is NO shortcut. This is a zero-sum game: either HR works harder, or line managers work harder.

So please stop searching for ready-made sets of competencies or interview questions. Cross them off your list. Trust me – you wouldn’t be happy with them after you got the wrapping off anyway.