How to measure the frequency and the variety of a competency portfolio using behavioural event interview

In a complex organization such as a firm is increasingly relevant to assess the human capital of the employees with special regard to managerial position. As shown by prior studies, a fine-grained analysis of individual competencies enables firms to better implement human research practices for recruiting, training and managing career of their employees. In recent organizational literature several studies have underlined the importance to consider the multidimensionality nature of individual competencies. The cognitive intelligence is only a part of a more complex structure, and the “cognitive framework” has to be extended considering the contributions on emotional and social competencies. Usually these competencies are assessed by self-reporting one-dimensional measure. More recently the Emotional, Social and Cognitive competencies have been considered latent variables and are measured by means of several behavioral indicators. The aim of our research is to provide a contribution on the competency measurement capturing the complex nature of this construct. The data for each individual and each competency has been reported in a n x m matrix of zeros and ones, where n is equal to the number of episodes told by the interviewed whereas m is equal to the number of indicators used to measure the competency. Nevertheless this matrix is sparse and as a consequence of this characteristic some summary indices lose importance and sense. The contribution of this paper is to propose a one-dimensional index useful when we treat with sparse binary matrix. The Index takes into account both the variety of behavioral indicators activated within a given competency, and how frequently they are used among the episodes told by an interviewed. The higher the value of the index, the higher the ability of the interviewed to manifest the competency. In other words, the index is designed to take into account both the depth and breadth of the interviewee’s competency portfolio and it allows us to compare different response set with the same sparsity but different pattern. To illutrate the ability to capture the different patterns of response we present some examples in the appendix.