At ProfilAS, we’ve watched too many promising candidates crash and burn in their first six months. The resume looked perfect, the interview went smoothly, and somehow it all went sideways. You know the feeling—that sinking realization that you’ve made another expensive hiring mistake.

Here’s what might surprise you: the problem isn’t usually with their experience or qualifications. Most hiring failures happen because we’re measuring the wrong things entirely. We get caught up in where someone went to school or how they performed at their last job, but we’re missing the fundamental question that matters most.

Can they actually do what this specific role demands?

Traditional hiring approaches often rely heavily on past performance indicators and personality assessments. While these tools have their place, they don’t tell us much about someone’s actual capacity to handle the unique challenges of a particular position. Past performance, as any investor will tell you, doesn’t guarantee future results.

The competency gap appears to be widening in today’s rapidly changing work environment. Skills that were valuable five years ago may be less relevant now, and the soft skills that drive success in one company culture might be completely misaligned with another organization’s needs.

What’s particularly frustrating is how personality-based assessments have dominated the hiring landscape for decades. These tests might tell you whether someone prefers working in teams or alone, but they won’t predict whether they can actually lead a team through a crisis or solve complex problems under pressure.

The research suggests that competency-based assessments provide a more accurate picture of job performance potential. When we focus on what someone can demonstrably do rather than how they prefer to work, we get clearer insights into their likelihood of success.

But here’s where it gets tricky—measuring competencies isn’t as straightforward as it sounds. Traditional methods often involve lengthy assessment centers or subjective interviews that introduce bias. What we really need is a way to evaluate specific capabilities objectively while accounting for the context in which they’ll be applied.

This is where the intersection of psychology and technology becomes interesting. Advanced assessment tools can now analyze multiple behavioral and performance markers simultaneously, providing a more comprehensive view of someone’s capabilities. Instead of guessing based on limited data points, we can make decisions grounded in empirical evidence.

The shift toward competency-based hiring isn’t just about reducing bad hires—though that’s certainly a benefit. It’s about building teams where each person’s strengths align with what the role actually requires. When you get that alignment right, performance tends to follow naturally.

Of course, no assessment system is perfect. There’s always an element of uncertainty in human judgment and performance prediction. But when we move from subjective impressions to objective capability analysis, we’re at least playing the odds in our favor.

The next time you’re evaluating candidates, consider asking yourself: am I measuring what they’ve done, or am I measuring what they can do? The difference between those two questions might just be the key to your next successful hire.

Interested to learn more? Check out our CORE REPORTS