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KSA stands for Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities. It’s a framework that helps HR find, keep, and distribute talent within a business. By thinking about the KSAs needed in a team or project, you are maximizing your chances of hiring the most appropriate candidate. KSAs are also valuable for helping you train individuals with the skills they most need, and staff projects with the most suitable workers.
What Is Knowledge?
Knowledge is a set of information that you understand about a particular topic. It is usually gathered via formal education, professional training, or research. Knowledge can also be built directly on the job—for example, through mentoring—but it more commonly refers to the theoretical aspects of a profession.
For example, you may have knowledge of specific teaching techniques without having worked as a teacher. Similarly, you can know about nursing from a college degree—or project management from a training course—without having applied that knowledge.
What Are Skills?
The crucial difference between skills and knowledge is that skills are improved through direct experience. They are measurable applications of knowledge on a particular task. For example, you are practicing a skill when applying project management principles to your team’s workflow.
Other examples of skills include plumbing, driving, negotiating, managing teams, and treating illnesses.
What Are Abilities?
The terms “skill” and “ability” are sometimes used interchangeably, but there is a difference between them. While a skill is something you can learn and improve, an ability is often a personal quality that is not trainable. For instance, being on time, making connections easily, or displaying resilience are examples of abilities. Some abilities might be what some HR professionals call “soft skills”—which include communicating effectively and paying attention to detail.
Examples of Using KSAs
Using the KSA model in your business can help strengthen your HR efforts. This is because with an optimized pool of knowledge, skills, and abilities comes a more productive workforce. KSAs are crucial in recruitment as—for example—they can help to define the gap you are filling. However, they should continue to be used when people are well into their careers as they can be used to help redistribute the knowledge, skills, and abilities of the workforce to where it is most needed within the business.
Here are our main examples of using KSAs.
- Recruitment: When filling positions in your business, a KSA breakdown helps you focus on the most suitable candidates. The main knowledge, skills, and abilities needed on the job can help screen candidates at the CV stage and assess their performance at interviews.
- Onboarding: You should continue assessing KSAs after hiring. When a new staff member joins, they must adapt to the projects, processes, and culture in their team. If managers understand which KSAs they do and don’t have, they can help prioritize new hires’ first tasks.
- Identifying skills gaps: Understanding your workforce from a KSA perspective helps staff specific projects or business units. If a specific team or individual lacks certain KSAs that are essential to their work or that could improve efficiency, solutions include training, recruiting, or mentoring.
- Training: Be aware of team members’ KSAs when providing training. Firstly, you must ensure that the training is relevant to the person’s job spec and their skill, knowledge, or ability level. In addition, KSAs can help distribute and prioritize training among team members so that those most in need of skills benefit from it.
- Mentoring: A great way to transfer KSAs between coworkers is through mentoring. For mentoring to be effective, the mentee must set goals—which often involve improving certain KSAs. The mentoring relationship can be successful if the mentor has KSAs that the mentee needs in their role.
How to Use KSAs in Recruitment
One of the most popular uses for the KSA model is in recruitment, as it’s an expensive process that should be done right the first time. Hiring a candidate based on the role’s required knowledge, skills, and abilities maximizes the chances that they will do well in the job, fit in with the team, and stay with the organization for longer.
The KSA model can be used throughout the recruitment process to find a best-fit employee. Below, we outline the three ways to use KSAs in recruitment.
Identify the KSAs needed for a team or role
To attract the most suitable talent for a role, be highly specific about the KSAs needed to do the job well. This ensures the new hire is qualified for the tasks awaiting them, as well as understands them.
Work with the hiring manager to identify the KSA gaps in the team and which of them are essential or desired in the new role.
For example, if you were hiring a waiter in a luxury restaurant, pre-requisite KSAs may include the Introductory Sommelier Certificate for wine knowledge, customer service skills, and the ability to be discreet.
Screen candidates based on KSAs
Before meeting candidates for an interview, you may develop a shortlist based on the details they have provided in their resumes and cover letters. To avoid any subjective bias—and to utilize interview time wisely—use KSAs as your main method of screening candidates.
The KSAs identified for the role should be included in the job description. Use them to evaluate applications and set the highest-scoring ones to one side. For instance, if you’re looking for a candidate for a construction role and the most desirable KSAs include a civil engineering degree, the ability to manage large teams for commercial properties, and the ability to work well under pressure, you should shortlist applications that best demonstrate these.
Assess candidates based on KSAs
Though post-interview decisions can involve an element of gut feeling, using the KSA model is a fair and methodical way to assess performance and rank different candidates.
Included below are example questions that can be used to assess interview performance based on KSAs.
- To what extent have they demonstrated knowledge of our company’s local area?
- Have they explained past uses of the skills required for the job?
- Have they demonstrated the ability to work well with others?
Conclusion
KSA is an HR model that helps you identify the Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities that your business currently has or needs. Applications of this model range from recruitment to onboarding, training, and mentoring.
It’s particularly important to run the recruitment process with KSAs in mind as choosing the right candidate determines the course of the working relationship. You can use a role’s list of KSAs to screen and assess candidates, in collaboration with the hiring manager.
