Introduction
This technique used by Flanagan in 1954 has been innovated and used with some variations over the years and is one of the resources that can be used to:
* Carry out a personnel selection process.
* Carry out an evaluation of the work performance of the workers of an organization.
* Carry out a diagnosis of training needs.
* Carry out a competency analysis.
* Identify competencies.
Since the preceding articles are oriented to the Identification of Competencies, we will ignore the comments regarding the other applications.
Application
The critical incident technique has two forms of use:
* Questionnaire.
* Critical Incident Interview.
Questionnaire
The following questions may be included in the form to be used:
* Description of the incident.
* What were the general circumstances that led to that incident?
* Description as accurate as possible of what you did that seemed so efficient.
* When did it occur?
* How long has the operator been in this job?
* How long has this worker been with the company?
By means of the questionnaire, information about labor effectiveness is collected, to collect ineffectiveness incidents the questionnaire is written in negative.
Interview
Because the descriptions of behavior necessary to identify competencies are not a tangible expression that provides a solid basis when managing human resources, it is necessary to take examples of behaviors from real life, this is carried out through a series of interviews of critical incidents (BEI of English: Behavioral Event Interview) to the representative sample selected by the panel of experts.
This tool designed and widely used by Dr. David Mc.Clelland and his team at Mc.Ber & Company, and which supports competency models under the basic assumption that the best predictor of a person's future performance is their performance past.
The BEI consists of a highly structured, in-depth and detailed interview of the candidate's past performance, which allows to identify and measure the degree of recurrence, consistency and solidity of the subject's competencies, evidenced in the repertoire of behaviors that he has displayed in his successful performance as a holder of a particular position. Research shows that the more recurrent and solid the subject's competencies are, the better and more successful their professional and managerial performance is.
Similarly, the less recurrent and solid the subject's competencies are, the less efficient and competent their performance is, producing average or low-quality results. The key assumption of both conclusions documented in the literature is that there is a causal relationship between competencies and successful performance.
EIB protocols provide a wealth of data and information for the identification of competencies, and very specific descriptions of critical work behaviors in specific situations. Through this an estimate can be made about when, how, where, they acquired their key competencies.
Advantages offered by EIB interviews:
* Empirical identification of competences superior or different from those generated by the panel of experts.
* Accuracy about what competencies are and how they are expressed in specific jobs and organizations.
* Lack of racial, sex, or cultural biases.
In the critical incident interview, the interviewer, through a series of open questions, asks the interviewee to describe what they did, said, thought and felt during a specific experience. The interviewer must invite the interviewees to narrate the concrete actions that took place in the past. In this way, he manages to obtain the experiences of the interviewee as they were and how he lived them.
With critical incident interviews, interviewees are not allowed to draw conclusions about their past experiences. What is important is to find out the motives, skills and knowledge that the interviewee really has and uses.
The critical incident interview uses the structured exploration strategy, looking for signs that this person has a series of key competencies, investigating whether they have done them before.
When evaluating a certain competence, we start from an open question, for example:
Tell me about a time when you did something new or in a different way that led to an improvement in your job, department or organization?
where the question is aimed at evaluating the innovation of the interviewee.
Since many times the interviewee tends to provide very general answers to an open question or tends to get lost describing non-relevant behaviors, and we must obtain enough data to know what he did, said, felt and thought during the specific situation that he describes, it is also used the next questions:
* What led to this situation?
* Who intervened?
* What did you think about that situation?
* What was your role?
* What did you do?
* What result was produced?
These questions allow us to obtain more information from the interviewee (without suggesting words or directing his answers) so that he does not get lost in generalizations and narrates what happened as he lived it, and thus we can obtain the greatest amount of relevant information for an adequate analysis.
Self appraisal
Whenever you finish conducting an interview, reflect on your performance and meeting your goals, ask yourself:
* Have I explored all the competencies indicated in the profile and / or detected in the questionnaires?
* Have I previously familiarized myself with the behavioral indicators for a proper evaluation?
* Have I observed the technique and structure?
* Did I ask the right questions and avoid leading questions?
* Did I avoid generalizations and conduct the interview for relevant facts?
