Strategic personnel management requires an understanding of what employee skills, qualities and policies are required for the company to operate successfully. The Russian labor market is experiencing an increasing sh0rtage of highly skilled technology personnel and in this situation, as never before, it is important to retain specialists and develop their professional skills. Specialists in turn need to understand the development priorities within the company as well as the knowledge and skills required for each specific position. One of these HR technologies is professional competency assessment . Competency is interpreted as the application of specific knowledge and skills necessary to perform a job successfully. Employees demonstrate  competencies in their professional activity. The set of knowledge and skills for a specific position or professional area, which employees require to achieve the company's strategic objectives, is called a competency model.

There are three types of competencies that complement each other:

Business awareness competencies (corporate ) - set general requirements for the company's personnel, measure personnel potential for career growth, and describe personal goals and motivation for employees.

Corporate leadership competencies - define an employee's ability to handle management tasks , describe skills and abilities required for a successful manager.

Professional ( functional ) competencies - define the employee's professional ability to work efficiently in a given capacity/position by describing the knowledge, abilities and skills required for professional activity.

All three types of competencies are a foundation for a more detailed lists of responsibilities fixed in j0b descriptions.

A competency profile enables the setting of required personnel selection criteria: the company hires employees whose ability closely matches the organization's development requirements. Competency pro files are also used to build and track performance of an integrated personnel training and development system. Using competency profiles allows the highlighting of specialist and manager assessment criteria aligned with the strategy.