Most organisations believe or assume that COMPETENCIES such as technical skills, qualifications, job knowledge and generic competencies are the key drivers of job performance.

As a result, they structure their selection processes around determining whether a candidate has the technical know – how to do the job. While there is no doubt that COMPETENCIES are critical to job performance, research very clearly shows that it is in fact that CAPABILITY is the key driver of job performance and differentiator between poor, average and good performers. Before we have a closer look at the research, let’s first have a quick look at what we mean by COMPETENCIES and CAPABILITIES.

Competencies

Competencies comprise the knowledge skills and behaviors that individuals learn and acquire through education, work and life experience. Competencies can be technical and specific to job families such as HR, Management, Engineering, Quality, Logistics, Finance and so on. Competencies can also be generic and used in many different jobs across all the job families such as planning, organising, service orientation.

Capabilities

Capabilities are mostly inherent, in – born, hardwired in a person. Capabilities include an individual's personality and emotional capabilities, values and interests. Capabilities also include cognitive capabilities or "thinking potential" (IQ). Research indicates that cognitive and personality/emotional Capabilities have the strongest impact of all capabilities on job performance.

Capability is the precursor of competencies. Both the types and level of competencies that individuals acquire and develop is highly influenced by their capabilities. Capability also strongly influences how effectively individuals utilise and apply their competencies. Capability is also a strong determinant of soft skills and largely influences a person's overall level of functioning. We will elaborate on the foregoing in a number of the modules going forward.

The table below provides examples of competencies and capability.