STUDY ON EFFECTIVE COMPETENCIES FOR MANAGING TALENT AT SELECT IT COMPANIES BASED AT INDIA

Competency Mapping, the buzz word in any industry is not complicated as it may appear. At the heart of any successful activity lies a competence or skill. Competency mapping is a strategic HR framework for monitoring the performance and development of human resources in organization. Regardless of whatever happens to the future of software in India, the people who are outstanding in their performance will continue to be in demand and will keep rising; To Identify and retain these group of people the human resource of each organization should develop the competencies which people should possess in order to compete in a highly competitive market. Spencer and Spencer (1993) in their work “competence at work” have defined competency as an underlying characteristic of an individual that is causally related to criterion referenced effecting and or superior performance in a job situation. Competence is defined as an amalgamation of knowledge, skills, ability attitude, values, trait, motives and self concept (Naqvi2009). Based on the US department of labor’s (DOL) framework, the competency model can be described as a pyramid consisting of hierarchical set of tiers. The pyramid is divided into 3 main blocks of foundational competencies, industry related and occupation related competencies. Each of these blocks is made up of tiers which consist of a set of competencies that represent the skills, knowledge and abilities essential to be successful in an occupation. Starting from the base, the tiers cover competencies that are common to several occupations and industries. As we traverse up the pyramid, the competencies become industry and occupation specific. However it does not suggest that it is a sequential model, i.e. one need to have all the lower end competencies to move up to the higher level competencies. The model is constructed in a bottom up approach using a combination of research, data collection and analysis, focus groups and case study interviews. The objective of the present study is to understand the various competency mapping practices across the select IT companies and to present a view on how competency mapping is useful for talent management practices in those selected organization. The survey is conducted in two folds-firstly by circulating questionnaires and doing behavioral event interviews about various competencies mapping tools and practices and its effectiveness for talent management systems and secondly collecting secondary data on the process in which it is executed.