Category: about competences

about competences

Our plans for 2025

The year 2025 is approaching, and as the Interdisciplinary Center for Personnel Development, we already have plans for next year. First of all, our goal will be to further develop key competencies of research staff and administrative support staff of the science and higher education sector in Poland, which can contribute to strengthening the position of domestic universities on the international stage. We are conducting research on topics related to the competencies of university employees, the automation of managers and teams, the impact of artificial intelligence on the work of research teams, and the reduction of managerial influence and its

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about competences

What is an assessment center in testing the competencies of candidates or employees? Part 3

HR consultants emphasize that Assessment Centre participants usually have to compete among themselves for a single vacancy. On the one hand, this generates motivation to perform to the best of their ability, while on the other hand it can have a stressful effect on those who are less active and open-minded. There is also time pressure during the session, as all the goals set for the participants must be achieved as quickly as possible. Participants’ form can also be impaired by the need to adapt quickly to new conditions and situations, as well as the awareness of being observed and

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about competences

What is an assessment center in testing the competencies of candidates or employees? Part 2

Assessment Centre participants are evaluated by several assessors during specially prepared tasks and simulation tests. This team of experts usually includes a psychologist or sociologist, a specialist in the industry in which the company operates and the direct superior of the future employee. The assessors observe the behavior of the candidates as they perform the tasks of each session, and then work together to develop a combined assessment of each participant’s competence. For both the employer and the employee, an assessment conducted by several people and, in addition, after completing a complete series of tasks, can be regarded as very

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about competences

What is an assessment center in testing the competencies of candidates or employees? Part 1

We often get questions about how to test the competencies of candidates or employees in other ways besides tests. In consulting and business activities, the assessment center method is often used, which we will describe in the following posts. The job search is not limited to finding matching job offers, preparing a resume, cover letter and a simple interview. Often the next step on the road to convince an employer to us is an assessment center. This form of meeting with candidates is used especially by large companies that have developed their own standards for acquiring employees in the past.

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about competences

Researcher’s competency: how to measure the “coping with stress” competency?

Coping with stress is another competence that we learn from childhood. However, we rarely learn it to the extent that we can handle difficult situations in life or at work without problems. Again, the question is how to measure this competency to check the level of mastery and opportunities to improve this skill. Stress in the workplace is experienced by everyone, regardless of their profession, position or salary. However, such nervous tension is not only characteristic of those who have an occupation. Stress also occurs when we are forced to wait for hours, stand still or perform monotonous tasks. Stress

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about competences

Researcher competencies: how to measure the competency “organization of own work”?

Another competency that we can measure in researchers, self-work organization. Colloquially, we can see or somehow tell if someone is well-organized or disorganized. Just how do we measure it? We associate self-work organization directly with the ability to plan tasks in time and execute them according to plan, possibly reacting to unforeseen obstacles to the plan. Surveys of managers show that only 10% of people in managerial positions do not complain about lack of time, the rest would need an extra few to several hours. The result of poor time planning is excessive fatigue, lack of time for the family

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about competences

Competence of the researcher: how to measure the competence “communicativeness”?

Another competency that can be measured using competency profiles is communicativeness. From our training and consulting experience, we know that this topic is very popular in training inquiries and generally causes a lot of problems with work in organizations. We have this observation that in all the competencies we learn from childhood, we are quite poor and rarely can speak well, run, listen, play an instrument, cook and so on. Communication is one such competence that we constantly need to improve. Typical communication between people or between cells in a company always follows the same pattern. Someone who wants to

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about competences

Researcher competencies: how do you measure the “assertiveness” competency?

In the following weeks, we want to present some examples of the competencies we measure in the competency measurement tools that you can check out on our website. Users of the tools and readers of the blog ask us how we do the measurement, what we take into account when measuring and how we created the indicators. Let’s take one of the competencies used in the competency profiles of our researcher competency measurement tools as an example. It will be assertiveness. First, let’s ask ourselves what assertiveness is. Thus, a person’s assertiveness is seen as the gentle, sincere and firm

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about competences

Skill books for the vacations: A Simple Way to Get There. Mark Joyner

Another book for the vacations, or rather a booklet (it’s thin and there’s a lot of blank space in it), is “A Simple Way to Go” by Mark Joyner. He invented the term simple.ology and built an entire approach to problem solving around it. This is not a scientific book, nor is it aimed at scientists. What’s more, scientists may treat it indulgently, but it takes 2-3 hours to read, which is about as much as the average person browses social media every day. That’s why it’s worth turning off Whatsup, Instagram, Facebook or YouTube for a day and devoting

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about competences

Competence books for the vacations: Creativity Code. Marcus du Sautoy

Another book, perhaps for another week of researcher’s vacation, is “The Code of Creativity. Art and Innovation in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” by Marcus du Sautoy. Although the term “artificial intelligence” became really popular with the GPT Chat in 2022, the book was published in 2019 and you can already read from it how close the invention was. The author is a mathematician and treats both creativity and its most obvious result – art – from this perspective. Especially since his wife, he declares, is an artist, which has a big impact on the layout of the content, examples

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