Level of Competence

Qualifications and competences are often evaluated in more levels.

Common levels of competence

System supports most commonly used levels:

Student

Student is the most basic level used for people that are not competent to perform work related with the requested competence. They are involved to the tasks to get practice or perform supportive operations.

A student:

• Never works independently
• Never makes a review
• Has never responsibility for a task that has required qualification or competence

Junior

Juniors are persons capable to perform tasks under the supervision. They are expected to complete task independently, although they might need an advice.
Task performed by a junior should always be reviewed by someone with higher level of competence.

A junior:

• Can work independently
• Should always have assigned mentor who advices him/her when needed
• Mentor is expected to have time for junior
• Mentor should have higher level of the same or closely related competence or qualification
• Can review the task if they that is performed by a person with higher qualification

Experienced

Experienced worker has enough training, experience and skills to work independently and be fully responsible for task performance.

Experience worker should always have appropriated process training to understand

• Importance of the tasks related with the competence
• Internal processes and task consequences
• How escalation procedure in a company works

Expert

Expert is the highest level of the qualification and it is expected that expert has deep knowledge of the work area. Experts leads innovations and improvements, teach juniors and spread knowledge.

An Expert:

• Cooperate on the knowledgebase to build up general company skills.
• Have time to think how to work as good as possible
• Regularly study trends and technologies
• Cooperates as consultants on project so less skilled persons gain knowledge from them

Might be good to know

Are the levels used for qualifications?

Qualifications depend on a certificate or some exam. These are often only single-level and so the levels are not formally distinguished.

Nevertheless, levels are widely used for internally defied competencies as well as for internal differentiation of the competence level for some qualification:

• Person with a qualification but without experience from a real project has the Junior level
• Person with at least single successful project moves to the Experience level.

Can we change the list of levels?

Default levels are predefined in the default system implementation. Level of competence are defined by system counter but they can be modified for clients on request (paid service).