Synthesizing Minimum Qualifications Using an Occupational Area Job Analysis Questionnaire

Determining minimum qualifications is largely an impressionistic process loosely related to training and education ratings of individuals. In determining and publishing minimum qualifications, the hiring official essentially delegates the authority for individual assessment of competency to external agencies. Minimum qualifications are, at best, a surrogate estimate of an individual's potential to perform the target job duties based on inferred knowledge, skills and abilities and competencies required for effective performance. Also, this requires the additional inferential leap backward in time to the individual's experience. Validation research on minimum qualifications has been limited, and, in application, the procedure is supported by a very impressionistic and global judgment process. The project described employs a systematic procedure linking the knowledge, skills and abilities and the competency content for an occupational area to the typical education, training and experience activities judged as required to achieve functional competence. Minimum qualifications for any single target position can then be synthetically derived from the database.