HR-XML and competencies

HR-XML standard can be used to describe competencies. Two schema reflect how competencies can be described in standardized way. One is called „Competencies” and the other „CompetencyTypes”.
[Source documents have been published by HR-XML Consortium as a recommendation on April 15, 2007]

HR-XML standard describes a scheme which can be sued to capture information about evidence used to substantiate a competency, their ratings and weights (Competency module) and reusable data typed for referencing competencies (CompetencyTypes module). Both schema are designed in order to be used in process-oriented environments and can be used to rate, measure, match asses competency (skills) against one that is demanded, required (e.g. as a prerequisite, skill requited to take training).

First of all standard defines a competency. Obviously this is required before you make any step forward into a world of xsd.

HR-XML definition of competency is :

a specific, identifiable, definable and measurable knowledge, skill, ability and/or other deployment-related characteristic (e.g. attitude, behavior, physical ability) which a human resource may possess and which is necessary for, or material to, the performance of an activity within a specific business context.

This definition needs to be extended with facts that competencies are measurable, and some of them (that are hard to quantify) may be described simple as existing/non-existing, just subjectively recognized, when others may be complex and recursive (including other competencies).

Nevetheless all of them need to be considered as attributes of single person – human resource that undergoes HR management processess not desctiptors.
In the area of competencies HR-XML schema can be useful in any process that requires checking, comparing, matching and rating. Standard schema can be used in all processes where business intelligence of particular process involves competencies, supporting cross-disciplinary tren