BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Smith (1993) Claim that it is the people who give life to an organization and they can be
regarded as an organizations most important assets. Covey (1997) agrees stating that people
attain the highest value in an organization, because they are the one who produce ever y thing
else at the personal, interpersonal, managerial and organization levels. Johnson and Scholes
(2002) stated that the possession of resources including people, does not guarantee strategic
success. However, the way these resources are deployed, managed, controlled and in the case of
people, motivated to create competence in those activities and business processes needed to
achieve competitive advantage. Ulrich (1998) started that all organizations face five critical
competitive challenge; globalization, profitability through growth, technology, intellectual
capital and change. He suggested that these all provide a valuable opportunity for the human
resource practitioner to play a leading role in facing these challenges. The more knowledge and
skills people posses, the more effective they will be, and the better they will be able to think, be
innovative, exhibit creativity in the job situation and align their competencies with organizational
strategies goals.
Public sectors are importance vehicles for the delivery of social services, and leaders of these
institutions are to a large extent responsible for operational the visions and objectives that policy
makers for the services and the well being of a nation Septimi Kitta and Daniel Fussy (2013).
The competency based approach to professional development is well accepted in higher
education (Westera 2001), and in human resource management literature where it is regarded as a
critical part of the overall management development process, as it allows one to identify the gas
between current skills and the skills required (Brown 2002)
The concept of Competency
The definition of competency are varied and include the ability of a person to perform a job
(Woodruffe 1993); Skills that are developed in a pattern (Bradley& Huseman 2003). Moreover
the discussion continues on whether the term competency and competence have the same
meaning or not, according to some dictionaries, both concepts have the same meaning while
others highlights the differences. Supporters of the latter approach claim that competency
concentrates on how people behave while competence focused on what people do(Tadas ).

Mangham (1986) noted that competence may relate to personal models, outcomes models or
education and training models, as well as to standards approach in which benchmarking criteria
are used.
Recruitment and selection
Labor market shortages and recruitment difficulties have led to more competitive recruitment
market in the last decade. Van Dam and Anderson (2002) stated that the war for talent meant
that the emphasis in organizations moved from the selection to the attraction of employees.
Recruitment includes those practices and activities carried out by the organization with the
primary purpose of identifying and attracting potential employees (Breaugh & Starke, 2000).
Recruitment and selection play important role in service delivery. If utilized efficiently it can be
cost effective in more than way. From a managers point of view the objective is to get the
maximum return on investment from human capital.
Public sectors
The part of the economy concerned with providing government services. The composition of the
public sectors varies by country, but in most countries the public sector includes such services as
the police, military, public roads, public transit, primary & secondary education, and heath care
for the poor. The public sector might provide the services which benefit all of society rather
than just the individual who uses the services (investors words). The area of the Nations affairs
under government than private control (dictionary)
Research Problem
The current Human Resource for public sector challenges include inadequate and inequitable
acquired of skilled workers, high turnover, weak Human Resource Development, planning, and
management. Most organizations have little insight into the recruiter skills that have the greatest
impact on quality of hire and time to productivity. As a result recruiter training is often
unfocused and misaligned with the drivers of new hire quality (Recruiting Roundtable, 2008
Corporate Executive Board). Therefore given this trend it would be important to conduct a study
to determine the competency based procedures by public sectors in Tanzania. This is critical
because each organization need a competent workers as previous study of Amref 2009) have

indicated the need for more research on the use of competencies especially in the recruitment and
selection process. However it is clear than there is also considerable variation in the
understanding and application of the competency approach in public sectors. Despite these past
studies have inadequately addressed competency based recruitment and selection practices.
Beside this no any research on about this is known to have be done in public sectors in Tanzania.
This study therefore think to fill the existing gap by investigating the competency- based
recruitment and selection practices for Tanzania public sectors.
Research Objective
General objective
To determine the competency based recruitment and selection practices by Human resource staff
in Public sectors
Specific objectives
To determine the type of competence adopted by public sector on recruitment and selection in
public sectors
To assess the extent to which competence based affect the performance of employees in public
sectors
To investigate whether organization adopt the competence based recruitment and selection
To determine the cost incurred by organization due to lack o competence based recruitment and
selection
Research Questions
Which type of competence may attract HRO to recruit or select the applicants?
Is there any relationship between performance of employee and competence based?
Why public sectors must adopt competence based approach?
Which kinds of cost incurred by the organization for the lack of competence based on
recruitment and selection.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Competence based have been practiced by public services of other countries like Malaysian
(IIhaamie Abdul 2009), London (Weightman J 1994), South Africa (Van and Underson 2002),
US (Hood and Lodge 2004), South Africa again (Smit and Cronje 1982), German (Covey 1997),
Amazon ( Johnson and Scholes 2002). However the implementation was decentralized to the
department and not holistic (completed). The reason why they started to adopt the competence
based was due to either dissatisfaction involving the staff or the customers due to inconsistencies
in the staff management ( Lodge and Hood 2005)
Competence based human resources practices used competency framework (competencies that
distinguish high performer from average performers in all areas of organizational activity) as the
foundation for recruitment, selection, training and development, rewards and other aspects of
employee management (Horton 2000).
According to IIhaamie 2009, stated that Malaysian public service has been receiving high
number of complaints from the public services delivery, Out of reformation or organization
change in order to increase the level of service quality, It started to implement competency based
human resource practices at the end of 2002. From six competency based only five are
implemented which are recruitment and selection, training, career development, performance
management and reward.
Competency based recruitment and selection is defined by Malaysian public services as the
extend of screening methods that are used to select a small number of strong candidates from a
large group of applicants quickly and efficiently. Competency based recruitment and selection
start with the identification of the competencies needed by an organization to achieve its goals,
missions and objectives.

WORK PLAN

#.

ACTIVITIES

RESPONSIBLE

MONTHS
Apr

Ma
y

1.

Research proposal development

Investigator

and

supervisor

2.

Refinery of research proposal

Investigator

and

supervisor

3.

Pre-testing the survey tool and Investigator

data collection in the field.

4.

Data processing

Investigator

and

supervisor

Data analysis
Report writing
5.

Final

report

writing Investigator

(Dissertation) and submission.

supervisor

and

June

July Au
g

Sep

Oc
t

REFERRENCES
1. Smith, B.(1993), Competence based

action leaning, Journal of management

development, 12(1), pp. 43-48

2. Ulrich, D. (1998) A new mandate for human resource. In Ulrich (ed) Delivering results. A
new mandate for human resource professionals (pp. 31-32) Havard.
3. Mullins, S, H. (2010) human resource management. Oxford; Oxford University Press.
Chapter 5 takes a themed approach to the topic of employee selection.
4. IIhamie AGA (2009). Competency Based recruitment and selection and service quality in
Malaysian public organizations.
5. Septimi Kitta & Daniel Fussy. (2013) Bottlenecks in Preparation of Quality Teachers in
Tanzania; Mkwawa University. Tanzania.
6. Van, D. (2002). An assessment in the work place a competency based approach in South
Africa
7. Weightman, J. (1994) Competence in Action. London; IPD House.