Customer Reviews

The Handbook of Competency Mapping: Understanding, Designing and Implementing Competency Models in Organizations

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This is a reasonable introductory guide to competency modeling. It lacks the detailed treatment of job analysis and assessment found in organizational psychology journals, but that's not a reasonable expectation for a how-to book. Seema Sanghi has done a good job introducing the fundamentals. You can go on to learn more elsewhere--but you won't have to unlearn anything from this book.

The early chapters walk readers through the basics of competency modeling in organizations. Varied definitions of competencies from history, research and practice are concisely reviewed. The resulting synthesis is that "[a] competency model describes the combination of knowledge, skills and characteristics needed to effectively perform a role in an organization and is used as a human resource tool for selection, training and development, appraisal and succession planning." (p. 20). To the author, competencies are defined as much by organizational strategy as human capability. Models developed under this assumption are less transportable across organizations.

Readers learn a range of data gathering and analysis techniques used to identify competencies, define levels of each, and prioritize them within a model. There is practical troubleshooting guidance for issues ranging from ambiguous competency definitions to effective communication with project stakeholders. The author includes numerous sample forms, templates and rating scales that show how to use competency models for position definition, position fulfillment, performance management, employee development, and compensation. There is sufficient information for an experienced HR specialist to integrate competencies into their work, but not to teach these HR functions to a novice. This matches the books target audience.

The final four chapters contain sample competency models readers can customize for their own organizations. There is a list of general competencies, a model for general leadership roles, one for human resources specialists, and a detailed model for leaders in the automotive industry. The sample models illustrate the use of behavioral indicator statements to define levels of each competency. There are more elaborate sample models in the literature, such as the comprehensive FYI: For Your Improvement model for leadership development. But these are sufficient to illustrate the book's points and reasonable draft materials to help readers develop their own models.

I recommend this book for human resources specialists tackling a competency-based approach for the first time. It's also an efficient read for anyone who wants an introduction to competency work. Readers looking for a more advanced treatment of competencies might prefer Miguel-Angel Sicilia's edited volume Competencies in Organizational E-learning.

I'm not sure if the problem is English as a second language, poor translation, or bad proofreading/editing--but I was very disappointed with the contents of this (very expensive, very small) paperback book. There are some potentially useful checklists, but overall, it "felt" like a PhD dissertation awkwardly turned into a book.