October 2002

Assessing Career Competencies and Gaps — Measure Your Progress Regularly

by Vern Johnson and Judy Edson

As working professionals, we all need to invest time regularly to assess our performance. Ideally, the best time to review is after each major project. At the very least, plan to conduct an assessment annually. These performance assessments will help you determine what you have accomplished, which approaches provided the best results, and the degree to which you are reaching your career goals.

In addition to your performance, you also need to assess your career abilities, so you can identify your competencies and gaps. Competencies are the skills, knowledge and attitudes (SKAs) with which you demonstrate a high degree of professional ability. Gaps, on the other hand, describe the differences between desired abilities and measured performance.

Assessments can involve the results of your supervisor’s reviews as well as peer evaluations, but the major focus should be on your own view of what occurred during the assessment period.

Assessing personal progress helps guide career improvement efforts; it is not meant to bolster your ego or to create feelings of guilt. It is a necessary part of the personal improvement loop. It allows you to identify needed change, remediate important weaknesses with focused learning, and improve your ability to do the things that are important.

Start by Brainstorming

Begin your assessment with a brainstorming session. Create a two-column chart. List the professional activities that went well in the first column and the activities that need improvement in the second. You can then use this chart to analyze where you are. Analyzing what has gone well and what you need to improve is the first step toward identifying the behaviors and attitudes, as well as the technical and non-technical skills and knowledge, that are important to your professional performance and career growth.

After your brainstorming session, you might try the following exercise to assess your current competencies and identify the attributes you should prioritize for improvement. This exercise should take no more than about 10 minutes.

Where Should I Invest for Career Enhancement?

An Exercise

Here are six important behavioral attributes that are relative to the way a hypothetical engineer performs on the job. Included on the list are six technical and six non-technical SKAs that are important to professional performance and career success. In this exercise, each attribute was rated according to the engineer’s opinion of its relative importance and according to the engineer’s current performance. The relative importance of each of the attributes was rated using the scale: vh = very high; h = high; a = average; l = low; vl = very low. The relative importance of the three or four highest attributes were rated as vh; the three or four lowest were rated as vl; and the others as l, a, or h, as appropriate. The same was done relative to personal satisfaction with the engineer’s current performance.

Attributes  Relative Importance  Current Performance

A. Behaviors important to professional performance and career growth:
1. Continuously learn
vl l a h vh
vl l a h vh
2. Advance ideas and judgments without being asked
vl l a h vh
vl l a h vh
3. Approach each activity/task as an opportunity 
vl l a h vh
vl l a h vh
4. Base decisions on factual data
vl l a h vh
vl l a h vh
5. Build trust
vl l a h vh
vl l a h vh
6. Invest in relationships with colleagues
vl l a h vh
vl l a h vh

B. Technical skills, knowledge, attitudes:
7. Understand and use the design process
vl l a h vh
vl l a h vh
8. Use differential calculus as a tool
vl l a h vh
vl l a h vh
9. Base mechanical analysis on free body diagrams
vl l a h vh
vl l a h vh
10. Balance chemical reaction equations
vl l a h vh
vl l a h vh
11. Describe relevant environmental issues 
vl l a h vh
vl l a h vh
12. Design an electronic spreadsheet
vl l a h vh
vl l a h vh

C. Non-technical skills, knowledge, attitudes:
13. Accomplish assignments
vl l a h vh
vl l a h vh
14. Present oral progress reports
vl l a h vh
vl l a h vh
15. Identify multiple alternative solutions
vl l a h vh
vl l a h vh
16. Demonstrate effective team leadership skills
vl l a h vh
vl l a h vh
17. Analyze the results of activities 
vl l a h vh
vl l a h vh
18. Plan career activities
vl l a h vh
vl l a h vh

Analysis:
  1. Each attribute is plotted according to its importance and performance attributes (see Exhibit 2).
  2. Using the scale: vl = 1; l = 2; a = 3; h = r; and vh = 5, calculate the average values for importance (I) and for performance (P). In this example, we used Iave = 3.3 and Pave = 3.0
  3. Draw lines for Iave and Pave to come up with four quadrants. The four quadrants define attributes according to whether they are above or below average in career importance, and whether they are performed at above or below average levels.

 

The data on the graph indicate that:
  • Attributes in the above-average importance and performance quadrant (upper-right quadrant) represent important areas in which this person is quite good. They are competencies and should be include on this person’s resume. Attributes 1, 4, 5, 9, 13 and 15 are in this category.
  • Attributes in the quadrant that defines above-average importance but below- average performance (upper-left quadrant) represent career gaps and serve as a “window of opportunity.” They are candidates for improvement. Our hypothetical engineer should consider focusing learning activities on attributes 8, 12 and 16, as these are important for success but are currently being performed at relatively low levels.
  • This engineer can ignore attributes with below-average importance, applying his or her limited resources instead toward building more important attributes.

Now that you understand how to assess career competencies and gaps, you can complete a similar exercise for yourself — and assess your own career abilities. This exercise will take a little more time, but it will focus on the areas you need to improve, and it should help you update your career plan. As a bonus, it will outline attributes that you can highlight on your next resume!

Start by reviewing your professional activities of the past year — or during your most recent project assignment — and then create a brainstorming chart to help you reflect on what went well and what you need to improve. After completing your chart, you can complete the exercise online.

ASSESS

Be sure to print a copy of the results when you finish.

After you have assessed your competencies and gaps, ask yourself these questions:

With the 'Progress Report,' Make a Plan

Finally, you should identify where you need assistance and outline your career development plans for the near future — your next assessment period. Issues include barriers that need to be removed and problems that are beyond your scope of authority. You will need help with these. Career development plans describe the activities to which you need to give your attention during the next project or assessment period. Your plans should reference the gaps and issues you have identified. Make a chart to list the issues you must face and to outline your future career plans. In the first column list your issues; list your plans in the second.

Together, these exercises will provide you with a progress report on your career. You will be able to use them to identify your career competencies, gaps, issues and plans immediately. If you are a young professional, discuss these things with a career mentor. If you are a more seasoned professional, you still need to invest the necessary time to understand these career aspects before implementing the career activities you have planned for the near future.

Vern R. Johnson is Associate Dean of Engineering at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and is IEEE-USA’s Career Activities Editor. This article is adapted from materials in his book, Becoming a Technical Professional (Casas Adobes Publishing, Tucson, Ariz., 2000). For more information, go to http://www.dakotacom.net/~capublish.

Judy D. Edson is a senior database specialist and Web application specialist at the University of Arizona in Tuscon.