The Job Analysis and Competency Starter

Selection, appraisal, training design, pay banding and legal defensibility all rest on an accurate account of what a job requires. Almost every organisation builds all five on a job description written once, by someone who did not do the job, and never read since. A job description is a document; job analysis is a method for finding out what is true.

This starter covers three methods and when each is worth its cost, then goes deep on the one that does most of the work: the critical incident interview, fully scripted with the four probes that recover the most information. You then get worksheets for grouping incidents into competencies, guidance on naming them after observable behaviour rather than virtues, and a worked example of behavioural indicators that genuinely discriminate between performance levels. The final section is about keeping the model alive after the project ends, which is where most competency work quietly dies.

For HR teams, internal consultants and founders writing their first serious job specifications.

What it is not: a ready-made competency framework to adopt. It is the method for building your own, because a framework borrowed from another organisation describes that organisation’s work. Where job analysis supports pay equity or redundancy selection, the documentation standard is higher and the kit says so.

8 pages, A4, formatted for printing. Delivered as a PDF immediately after payment.