Technical competency framework – development and implementation

It has been four decades that the use of competencies is getting popular in business and industry among developed economies. The use of competencies is found beneficial by both employers and the employees. There are two distinct sides of competencies which are behavioral and technical. The literature available illustrates that significant amount of work has been done on developing behavioral aspects of competencies while there is an emphasis on producing technical competencies framework. There has been few examples where technical competencies are discussed. These are either very specific to a profession or related to organizations and not individuals. Developing technical competency framework which is applicable to a wide area of industry and trade therefore, remains a gap. Here in this paper, methodology of developing technical competencies related to common jobs in industry are discussed. This is exemplified by taking a job of mechanical fitter and developing the competency map for this position. The work is expandable to other trades and useful for the entire lifecycle of any job. Especial emphasis, however, is given to its application during hiring and performance evaluation process. Work done on behavioral side of competencies is also discoursed and is relation to technical competencies is stated.