Our company is creating competency models for most positions. Does anyone have experience with vendors for a product? What are some issue to consider when choosing one?

thanks

In the past, I've used the competencies developed by Lominger for such a project.

In terms of issues when selecting a vendor, I think the most obvious is do the competencies make sense in your organizational culture. What I saw when going through the creation of competency models was that during the planning stage, often the title of the competency caught someone's attention as being either important or unimportant, but when you actually examined the definition of the competency, that belief changed. So if you're buying out of the box competencies, make sure the language used in the definition will resonate with your org culture.

I don't know whether or not you've created competency models before, but at the risk of sounding too preachy, and answering a question that you didn't ask, I'll throw some more advice out there.

I spent months on these models and then they were barely used. Not because we didn't put the due diligence into making sure the organization was ready (we did), but because we missed two very important steps--

First, make sure that the competencies are aligned with actual job tasks, and these need to be documented for the organization. So a competency might be Action Orientation (from Lominger), but you've got to answer "What does this mean for my job?"--What do I do every day that shows whether or not I have good Action Orientation?

Second, you've got to provide avenues for development. Not necessarily training--but developmental opportunities and ideas for each competency.

Our company, Future Learning inc. www.futurelearning.com
identifies job competencies using the DACUM approach. In this approach well respected representatives of an occupational group come together in a two-day session with a trained facilitator to identify their competencies. Once developed, the competencies can be validated by others who did not take part in the original analysis. In my experience, this approach works very well because employees are involved in the process and support the final product. The words used to describe the competencies are those suggested by people in the job, so the words are meaningful to this group. In my experience, the process of developing the competencies is more important than the final product. Competencies change over time so the list of competencies should be regularly updated to keep up with changes on the job.
Bernadette Allen
ballen@futurelearning.com

Hello drube11:

Will you also assess for talent?

Bob,

I assume you define talent as an individual's natural (or learned) ability to perform a task. Is this correct?

In what context would talent be important to defining a specific role or position?