The U.S. division of a European company translates global competencies into a framework and interview/selection tools that are tailored to their business and environment and enhance talent selection.

A global company needed to increase the effectiveness of its recruiting and development practices in its growing U.S. electronics manufacturing division. The company had defined global leadership competencies, but the HR leadership team in the U.S. found this model to be too general for their purposes. They sought help from KCG in defining a competency model that was aligned with global principles and behaviors but also addressed the unique business needs of the U.S. division. The division then sought help in translating the competency framework into interview/selection guides.

KCG worked with a team of HR and business leaders to create a competency framework that was anchored in the business and would help them develop “Leaders of Tomorrow.” The project had three phases.

Phase 1: Identify Business Drivers and Success Behaviors for “Leaders of Tomorrow”

We began by gathering data from key stakeholders on both the business drivers and the behaviors that leaders would need in the future. To do this, we:

• Met with HR leaders and executives to capture key business issues, identify limitations of the current global competency model, and clarify how they intended to use the new framework
• Interviewed managers who were considered “Leaders of Tomorrow” to identify their common characteristics. These included being:
• Less controlling and more empowering
• More risk-taking
• More open to innovation
• Better at developing cooperative relationships

Phase 2: Develop Competency Model

Based on this input, we developed a competency model that was organized around six broad themes:

1. Shows determination to achieve excellent results
2. Focuses on the market
3. Finds better ways
4. Demands top performance
5. Inspires commitment
6. Develops self and others

Phase 3: Create Selection Guides

We translated the competencies into the capabilities and behaviors that would be expected at different points during career progression and created interview guides. We also provided benchmark examples of “strong” and “weak” responses to help recruiters match what they heard against a common scale and delivered a guide for conducting interviews, compiling the results, making decisions, etc.

Managers and recruiters gave high marks to the new selection and development tools on several counts:

The model and approach was used by other divisions of the company looking to deploy competency-based selection and development.