These and many other innovations an

These and many other innovations and applications of the competency methodology are presented in the following chapters. The job competency movement has advanced the way in which psychologists go about their traditional task of getting the right person into the right job. Formerly, psychologists identified the tasks required for the job (as in the motor skills needed for operating a streetcar or an airplane), constructed tests to measure the skills needed to perform these tasks, factor-analyzed performance scores on those tests after making sure the scores were reliable, and then tried to match the factor scores with success on the job—without conspicuous success. In essence, traditional industrial/organizational psychology started with separate analyses of the job and the person, and tried to fit them together. This approach had its greatest success in predicting academic performance from academic-type tests, but it has proved quite inadequate for predicting performance in the high-level jobs of greatest importance to predicting performance the job-competency approach, analysis starts with the person-in-the-job, makes no prior assumptions as to what characteristics are needed to perform the job well, and determines from open-ended behavioral event interviews which human characteristics are associated with job success.