Glossary
Competency
A competency is a mix of skills, knowledge and behavior that someone needs to do a job well, described in a way that lets you observe and rate it.
“Competency” is the HR word for “the things this job actually requires, written so you can tell whether someone has them.” It’s broader than a single skill and narrower than a personality trait.
Skill, competency, trait
| Example | Can you judge it in an interview? | |
|---|---|---|
| Skill | Writing SQL queries (instructions that pull data from a database) | Yes, with a task or specific questions |
| Competency | Solving problems with data: breaks down a messy question, picks the right data, explains the answer | Yes, through examples and scenarios |
| Trait | Curious | Only indirectly, and not reliably |
Competencies are useful because they describe behavior. You can hear someone describe how they broke down a problem. You can’t hear curiosity directly.
Defining one well
A good competency has a name, a one-line description and two or three signs you can listen for. For example:
Ownership. Sees a problem through until it’s solved, even when parts of it belong to someone else.
- Describes following up without being asked.
- Goes back to the person affected to tell them it’s sorted.
- Talks about what they’d change so it doesn’t happen again.
These signs become the core of your interview rubric.
Competency frameworks
Larger companies often keep a competency framework: one shared list of competencies, with levels, used across many jobs for hiring, reviews and promotions. It helps keep things consistent, but the wording can get vague. A general competency like “communication” usually needs to be made specific for each job. For a support agent, that might be “explains fixes simply.” For a product manager, “writes a clear one-page proposal.”
How many to test
For a first interview, three to five. More than that and each one gets a single rushed question. Pick the ones that best separate strong performers from weak ones in this job, and leave the rest for later interviews.
Mistakes
- Personality traits dressed up as competencies. “Confident,” “energetic” and “a people person” are hard to judge fairly and often favor people from certain backgrounds.
- Overlap. “Communication” and “managing relationships with colleagues and clients” may measure the same thing twice.
- Company values used as competencies. Values matter, but a value like “customer obsession” has to be turned into things people actually do before you can rate it.