What KSA Is
What KSA Is (hereinafter, the Lectio) is the second lesson part of the Sought Competences lesson that introduces its participants to employee competences and related topics.
This lesson belongs to the Introduction to Employment session of EmployableU Concepts.
Content
The predecessor lectio is Worker Competences.
Script
- How to measure the talent that needs to be hired? To describe its employment vacancies, the United States Federal Government uses so-called KSAs.
- KSA is an abbreviation for knowledge, skills, and abilities. The Federal Government and many other employers use this format to describe work-related competences in a series of narrative statements. KSAs are used to determine, along with résumés, who the best applicants are when several candidates qualify for a job.
- The first letter, K, stands for work-related knowledge. This refers to a body of knowledge that is applied directly to a particular employment vacancy. In plain English, this is what the employment candidate needs to know.
- The second letter, S, stands for work-related skills. This refers to the set of skills that the employment candidate must possess to be hired.
- The second letter, A, stands for work-related abilities or the set of the candidate's capacities.
- A skill is a particular ability that is developed through training and experience; this is a learned ability that its owner can use.
- An ability indicates something beyond any training. Let say, one can be trained to compose songs, but is not able to compose an extraordinary one.
- Two terms, competence and KSA, may possibly be used interchangeably, but they are not the same. Between two, competence is usually more general and KSA is more both descriptive and measurable.
Key terms
- KSA (knowledge, skills, and abilities), work-related knowledge, work-related skill, work-related ability, competence
Closing
- Is the KSA concept explained well? --Yes/No/I'm not sure
Operational KSAs is the successor lectio.
