MSPB: Employees with higher scores are not necessarily high performers. Image: Lightspring/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffWhen crafting federal job vacancy announcements, managers and HR officials should bear in mind that individuals with high confidence in their abilities are looking for different things than those with lower confidence and should tailor those announcements to appeal to both groups, the MSPB has said.
A recent MSPB publication follows up on a research paper from 2021 on “confidence in ability to perform successfully,” a measure of an employee’s belief that their actions will have the results and outcomes they intend. Based on results of a survey, it said that 52 percent of federal employees have high confidence, 38 percent medium confidence and the rest low confidence.
Employees with higher scores are not necessarily high performers, it said, but they have characteristics such as being more likely to prefer challenging settings and to pursue opportunities for advancement. While that paper examined implications for various factors related to managing employees, “CAPS” also has implication for advertising jobs and appealing to applicants, the new publication says.
“Low CAPS applicants may be more attracted to jobs that provide support and encouragement. To appeal to this group, job announcements should emphasize aspects such as a supportive work environment, team collaboration, adequate training to master job tasks, and skilled management to ensure workload fairness and reasonable expectations. Highlighting these factors can increase the appeal of the job to applicants who may have high potential but lower levels of confidence in their ability to perform successfully,” it says.
“High CAPS applicants may be more attracted to jobs that provide opportunities to make a difference and support for personal growth. For these applicants, job announcements should emphasize ways that an employee can contribute and have an impact by highlighting anticipated future achievements of the workgroup and benefits of what the workgroup does for the public or more specific stakeholders. The announcement can also emphasize opportunities for individual or customized contributions and the chance to increase related skills and capabilities,” it says.
It added that while both may be looking for certain aspects of a job, such as opportunities for training, they come to it from different perspectives. It says that “low CAPS applicants may be more interested in the assurance that training will be adequate for the tasks required by the environment, while high CAPS applicants may be more intrigued by the opportunity to specialize their skills in a direction of interest or learn untried skills in an area of innovative technology.”
“By emphasizing both high and low CAPS perspectives in job announcements, HR and hiring managers can attract a wider range of applicants and create a workplace that is inclusive of employees with different perspectives on their work,” it says.
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