Competency and Knowledge-Based Recruitment Process: A Human Resource Solution for Innovation and Success 

By Mostafa Sayyadi and Michael J. Provitera

As the world recovers from the COVID-19 crisis, the world economy is still in flux. Many jobs disappeared from the scene as many organizations adjust their workforce. Attracting the best skills and best talent has also been a challenge for many organizations. Traditional recruitment methods are outdated, and our recommendation is to move to use a competency-based recruitment process. The competency-based method of recruitment revolutionizes the process of recruiting and attracting future human resources for the organization and brings extraordinary results. Results such as assembling a pool of top talent to meet the ever-increasing needs of today’s ever-changing business environment will be enhanced with this new recruitment process.  

Too much focus on the classic job interview questions, such as “explain your background and why you think you are the right person for this job?” will not provide the necessary skill-level organizations need for today’s evolving business environment. A recent study in Australia shows that only 19% of newly hired people have the necessary skills to perform the desired job. This research also shows that many of these organizations have used continuous questions like the one mentioned above in their recruitment process. The traditional employment method has not stood the test of time it is still being used in a world different from the past 50 years. 

Today’s global economy and the emergence of dramatic changes after the COVID-19 crisis require the recruitment and promotion of new skills for organizations, which requires a change in perspective toward the recruitment process. ^{[1] [2] [3] [4]} In our interview with one of the Australian organizations, it was shown that the recruitment processes have suffered from severe deficiencies and traditional interviews had attracted a disproportionate number of human resources for the organization. Our goal is simple. We wanted to provide the organizations we contact with the best talents and skills by optimizing the recruitment process and ensuring their long-term retention in the organization. Our initial research showed that many of the views on hiring and long-term organization retention have changed drastically since the Corona era. We found that most of these talents attach special importance to the continuous development of skills or the same learning environment and assess a high level of meaningfulness for jobs as the main requirement for a long-term stay in the job. 

We believe that the crisis of COVID-19 and remote work has increased the expectations of employees for more freedom in their work and has boosted virtual learning more and more. We found that less fortunate families had to play a harder role in managing both careers and families while the more influential employees found the means to meet the needs of their children. People ran out and bought iPads, workbooks, laptops, and computers to ensure that they, and their children, could work effectively from home. The less fortunate lacked the means of acquiring the necessary resources and fell short of both career and educational pursuits. The talented competent skill-based workforce began to redefine and play a stronger role in the design of their jobs. ^{[5] [6]} This is also enhanced by not only the changes in the views of employees towards their jobs but also by the needs of consumers that have also changed drastically. To respond more effectively to these new customer needs, organizations need a new set of skills. With the loss of many jobs due to the Corona crisis, many organizations are unaware of the fact that many of the skills of these eliminated jobs can be transferred to new jobs and used more effectively to respond to the new needs of customers. ^{[7] [8] [9] [10]} Also, the Corona crisis has caused the organization to interact more and more with the external ecosystem, and organizations rely on competency-based skilled workers to be more involved in the organization’s projects. These changes require new functions for the recruitment process. 

We believe that the emergence of these new needs and major changes in the post-corona business environment can be effectively answered through a competency-based recruitment process. We have been working on this new form of recruitment for the past few years and have seen an improvement in the quality of recruitment in organizations that have used this new way of recruiting their new workforce. This new recruitment method can be a suitable solution for many organizations that are struggling with the new consequences of the COVID-19 crisis. 

Competency-based Recruitment Process 

The first step in the competency-based recruitment process is to change the views towards the hiring process and evaluate the human resources for promotion. ^{[11] [12] [13]} Instead of trying to meet the immediate needs of managers, organizations first should pay attention to longer-term horizons and also pay attention to the needs of the customers in the future. The replaced new perspectives consider human resource skills as the core of the organization’s ability to better adapt to the changing business environment. Under this learning culture, the continuous development of skills will be the main criterion for the promotion of human resources. This continuous development of skills will create a platform for the development of innovation in the organization and attract and retain new talent.    

To change the views to better match the competency-based recruitment process, we also recommend that managers abandon the traditional views about the importance of educational qualifications and certificates and consider competency based on skills of a diverse workforce and rely more on the importance of their skills. Focusing less on educational degrees and certificates and focusing more on the diversification of competency skills can help to develop diversity in organizations and bring together a set of talented people with more diversity, which will ultimately lead to the development of innovation in organizations. 

The second step, after changing the views of the managers towards the recruitment process, is to change and improve the views of the external talent applicants and people working in the organization towards the organization. Organizations that use the competency-based recruitment process consider it necessary to advance the perception of external talent applicants and talent working in the organization toward excellence. Be aware that this is the path that the world’s most successful organizations are following and have invested heavily in developing their human resources.  

For example, McKinsey and Company found that in the COVID-19 human resource development matters more than ever, and these huge investments in learning not only lead to the creation of a learning work environment and enable organizations to respond more effectively to environmental changes, but also draws external talent applicants, and encourages talent to stay longer in the organization. 

In Conclusion  

Perhaps the innate convenience of humans always tempts them to use traditional questions for the hiring process. What works, always works, and it is not necessary to change. But we can safely say that continuing this traditional path will mean failure. Today, the COVID-19 crisis has opened our eyes more than ever to the current divides. By adopting a competency-based recruitment process, the opportunity for organizations to attract and retain top talent for the long term to better adapt to their new business environment and respond to the new needs of customers and human resources is imminent. This new method of recruitment is a solution for many organizations that can ensure their long-term survival and growth in their new business environment in the post-corona world and the emergence of better workforces. 

About the Authors

MOSTAFA SAYYADI works with senior business leaders to effectively develop innovation in companies, and helps companies – from start-ups to the Fortune 100 –succeed by improving the effectiveness of their leaders.  

MICHAEL J. PROVITERA is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Barry University in Florida, an author of the book titled “Mastering Self- Motivation” published by BusinessExpertPress. 

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