COMPETENCY-BASED EMPLOYEE SELECTION ACTIVITIES AND TRENDS OF EMPLOYEE SELECTION MODEL PREFERENCES OF LARGE-SIZED ENTERPRISES IN TURKEY

Yıl 2013, Cilt: 13 Sayı: 25, 145 - 172, 01.06.2013

Münire Çiftçi Umut Can Öztürk

Öz

Rising awareness of human resources has started to encourage corporations to
integrate a human resources department into themselves. A human resources department,
which predicates effective and efficient working, manages an organization’s workforce.
This department, which is responsible for attraction, selection and evaluation of new
employees, aims to hire the most suitable employees through a review in which it assesses
a prospective employee’s personality, education, skills and interests.
Corporations need to employ the most effective and high quality staff in order to be
creative and compete with rival firms effectively. This need for high quality staff forces
organizations to be meticulous in the selection process. What is important is to create an
element of competition which cannot be copied by rivals. The key to this is to have an
effective human resources department. Man is open to change and development as
opposed to machinery. Therefore, while recruiting new employees, utmost care must be
taken. Besides a prospective employee’s skills and experience, whether he or she can
work in concert with fellow employees must be taken into consideration as well.
The principal aim of a human resources department is to find the right person for the
right position, which is very important to an organization because hiring the wrong
employee will create problems for both the firm and the person hired. A human resources
department operates through several stages: first of all, it determines the number and
quality of the staff it needs and it is responsible for attracting the right employees. It then
must pick the right employees through recruitment process. The aim is to hire the best
prospective employee for the vacant position.
For both the present and future employee vacancies, an organization must have the
ability to select the most appropriate talents who will meet the organization’s needs and
make the biggest contribution to the organization. The positive image of an organization’s
workforce policy it pursues is only possible with an employee selection system based on
solid foundations and principles. An employee selection process based on objective
principles both inspires confidence for the organization and helps it to operate more
efficiently. Therefore, an employee selection process must be appropriate for the
organization.
Employee selection process requires an accordance between the prospective
employee’s skills and qualities and the job specifications. This process is a series of
methods by means of which we try to collect information about the candidates. Generally,
there are three basic methods of selection: a written examination, various tests and
interviews.
Today, both jobs and organizations have become more flexible. In order for a task to
be done, one must have technical skills about that task. However, having technical skill at
basic stage only is not enough for today’s organizations because components of
competency are required for better performance. Therefore, in addition to three basic
selection methods, organizations have started to adopt competency based selections.
Competency based selection and placement is the process of selecting the right
prospective employees for the right positions, providing the employee with the necessary
information which will help him or her start work in the organization and introducing him
or her to the fellow employees. Today, when finding, recruiting and retaining talented employees is becoming harder and harder, a selection method based on competency is of
great importance. Finding and recruiting an employee who will be in harmony with the
culture and structure of the organization and who will make great contributions to it can
only be selected through a competency based selection. Many corporations are aware of
competency based selection and prefer using it while selecting new workforce.
In this study, 2010 human resources plans of 164 firms selected from among the first
500 corporations in Turkey were studied and employee selections, methods used for the
selection and competencies expected of the employee were determined and analyzed.
In this study, content analysis, which is a qualitative and quantitative research
technique, was used. Considering the human resources plans of the organizations, which
were compiled by Capital magazine, a coding direction was created which was applied to
each corporation and the results were interpreted through descriptive statistics.
Content analysis is a scientific research method used in order to make appropriate and
meaningful inferences from texts and the context they are used in. Content analysis is
regarded as a whole of methodological tools and techniques applied to various texts, a
controlled effort of interpretation and a reading method based on deduction. The
fundamental objective of a content analysis is to convert into digital data written and other
materials. Besides, it is possible to make an inference from the messages within a content
analysis.
The following conclusions were derived having evaluated the results of the study:
Sectors give priority to basic competencies while selecting employees. These
competencies are indispensable features which sectors need a lot. For example, for the
banking sector: to be a graduate of economics, to be at an acceptable age, to have
completed his military service etc. In addition to basic competencies, personal
competencies (having problem solving ability, sharpening his or her skills, being open to
social contact, being apt for team work and assuming responsibility) are required by
sectors.
Today, having basic competencies is not sufficient to be selected for a job. People
who seek to get a job must make effort to improve their personal competencies as well. It
is seen that technical skills alone are not enough to be selected for a job because such
skills can be acquired through in-service training programs. It may be said that
corporations prefer training managers in their own training programs. Moreover, the fact
that most of the corporations in the study have management training programs indicate
that as well.
When we have a look at the methods used for selecting workforce, we see that most of
the firms use a personality inventory, which is interesting. Besides, the fact that
assessment center applications are among the firms’ selection methods indicate that they
take competencies into consideration while selecting workforce.
Although different qualities are expected of prospective employees depending on the
sector, personal development and a probationary period are among the primary
prerequisites. In addition to these, a great many firms guide employees toward programs
for their development after they have qualified for basic competencies. 64.6 % of 164
corporations in the study have a management training program. Mentoring support,
leadership development programs, effective teamwork and technical competencies are
available in these programs.
These analyses on competency based personnel selection and assessment, which
include 15 different sectors, are of great significance due to the fact that they provide detailed information about personnel selection today. Besides, it is also important because
it gives us what the priorities of big firms in Turkey are while selecting new employees.
The fact that these firms concentrate on competency based selection methods is an
important point. Therefore, we can infer that people who want to get a job in those firms
must concentrate on competency based development.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Human Resources Management, Employee Choice, Interviewing, Competency, Large-Scale Enterprises

YETKİNLİK BAZLI PERSONEL SEÇME FAALİYETLERİ VE TÜRKİYE’DEKİ BÜYÜK ÖLÇEKLİ İŞLETMELERİN İŞGÖREN SEÇME MODELİ TERCİHLERİNDEKİ EĞİLİMLER

Öz

Günümüzün taklit edilmesi ve kopyalanması en zor olan rekabet avantajı enstrümanı İnsan kaynağıdır. Bu nedenle insan kaynakları bölümünün en kritik fonksiyonu işgören seçmektir. Örgütün kendine özgü yapısını, yapılacak işin özelliklerini ve işgören adayının özelliklerini doğru analiz edebilmek örgütün sürdürülebilirliliği adına hayati bir önem taşımaktadır. Bu nedenle örgüt yönetimleri akademik çevreler işgören seçme teknikleri üzerinde çalışmalarını yoğunlaştırmaktadır. Yetkinlik kavramı bu tekniklere yeni bir boyut açmıştır. Bu çalışmada, işgören seçme kavramı, teorik altyapısı, yöntemleri ve yetkinlik kavramının konuya getirdiği boyut tartışılmıştır. Son bölümde ise Türkiye’deki büyük ölçekli şirketlerin işgören seçme eğilimleri analiz edilmiştir.

Anahtar Kelimeler

İnsan Kaynakları Yönetimi, İşgören Seçimi, Mülakat, Yetkinlik, Büyük Ölçekli İşletmeler