Competence from Entry to Practice to across the Career Span

I (GS) have the good fortune to work some great people in this industry, clients and colleagues alike. One the groups that I enjoy a great deal and who really stimulate my thinking on matters psychometric and competence in general is the Career Span Competence Collaborative. They have really helped shape my thinking around the nature of professional competence and how it evolves over the career span. I would like to share some of those ideas here and explore some implications of thinking about competence in the way that they do.

One of the key elements of professional competence is that it evolves over time, uniquely for each registrant. Owing to the similarity of curricula and the standards they are tied to, everyone within a profession starts out with approximately the same set of competencies. Once entering into the profession, however, everyone’s competence evolves in its own unique way. This happens because professional contexts shape competence in particular directions, as do the natural interests and motivations of individual professionals. As a result of this evolution every mature professional will be competent in a slightly different way from everyone else.

A second element is that non-technical competence plays a more significant role in defining mature practice than it does at entry to practice. I mentioned in a previous blog that many professions are changing their competency profiles to include more non-technical competencies, such as communication and even management. From the career span competence perspective, this inclusion foreshadows the importance of these competencies as one’s career progresses. My own experience is that, at entry to practice, performance expectations for some of these areas are likely quite low, even trivially so, and competence in them may have little to do with any training received as part of an educational program. Accordingly, my view is that the development of these skills should be a priority during the early years of professional practice where interactions with clients, colleagues, regulations, and even one’s own limitations acutely focuses the registrant’s attention on the significance of these competencies.

One implication of these differences between professionals is that an entry to practice standard is not a particularly good benchmark against which to evaluate professional, or mature competence. Competence does not just continue as an entry-to-practice exam would imply, it exceeds, often significantly, the standard of entry to practice for areas in which the professional is actively practicing. As a result, an entry-to-practice examination is probably not an effective tool for evaluating the competence of mature professionals. Other, more self-directed evaluations are likely more relevant and impactful.

A second implication is that Quality Assurance programs for registrants should include some explicit emphasis on the non-technical competencies that are difficult to acquire at entry-to-practice. These could include communication, teamwork, self-care, professional responsibilities, or any of the other activities that support and complete the professional context for the technical aspects of the profession.

Perhaps the most significant implication for me is that QA ought to be competency-based. I and my colleagues have reviewed many QA programs over the years and though many of the activities included under professional development are laudable, they are not always related to professional competence. Moreover, a registrant should be able to anticipate how the skills acquired in any QA activity would help them to improve workplace performance.

Thanks for reading this blog! We always enjoy any comments you might have about the ideas presented here!