Which Is More Important: Technical Proficiency or Functionality Skills?

In today's highly competitive world, technical skills alone is not sufficient for career success. Employers want employees who are well-rounded. Employees who have prepared themselves for the contract it job by balancing both their technical and functionality skills.

The technical proficiency of the personnel is a good assurance of his/her functional effectiveness within the work he/she is assigned. This proficiency or competence can be acquired through formal education and are further developed by training and job experience. The technical skills of the personnel can be translated into actions that result in effective and efficient performance.

Technical skills are the most fundamental type of skills that provides an individual with expertise to perform specialized tasks within a specific work domain which includes analytical ability and the ability to use appropriate tools and technique which are of paramount importance for lower-level managers who primarily supervise and responsible for carrying out the core day-to-day work of the organization.

Moreover, technical skills refer to being knowledgeable, proficient in a specific type of work or activity. It is the ability to work with things and are most important at lower and middle levels of management necessary in the implementation of the department programs and projects and one of which is the disposition of land of public domain in consonance with the government effort to uplift the citizenry from poverty through a secured land rights.

On the other hand, functionality refers to the knowledge, skill, and/or abilities required to fulfill required job tasks, duties or responsibilities of a personnel. The dynamic world in which personnel operates provides new challenges in the diverse, profound and incessant changes which confront mankind as it heads towards the 21st Century. In such a rapidly changing environment, there is great a focus on technical competence and not enough on competence in non-technical skills and attributes such as communication, problem solving and management skills than the technical capability.

Furthermore, competent people react to a situation following behaviors they have previously found to succeed. To be competent, a person would need to be able to interpret the situation in the context and to have a repertoire of possible actions to take and have trained in the possible actions in the repertoire, if this is relevant. Regardless of training, competency would grow through experience and the extent of an individual to learn and adapt.

Competencies are also what people need to be successful in their jobs. Job competencies are not the same as job task. Competencies include all the related knowledge, skills, abilities, and attributes that form a person's job. This set of context-specific qualities is correlated with superior job performance and can be used as a standard against which to measure job performance as well as to develop, recruit, and hire employees.

Job responsibilities require proficiency in functional skills or more technical skills. Functional skills have broad application across a variety of jobs. Job responsibilities typically require both functional and technical skills in collaboration.