People in the management field, would have heard about CAPM model for securities and portfolio valuation and eventual selection.. I was just thinking about using the same idea in the HR function.. why not consider the individual skills required for a particular position as individual securities and then a set of skills as portfolio. Now take the entire industry as the reference and identify the identical positions in other firms..get the skill sets that are required for those positions. Calculate the importance of each of these skills in terms of percentage for these positions in each firm..arrive at an average.. this would be the equalent of the risk free rate in the CAPM model.. the best firm would be taking the maximum risk and hence would be having the maximum return and the poor firm would be taking least riak and hence least return. Now if a particular company has to excel in that particular position, it should be willing to take a risk that is more than that taken by the best firm. However, the risk or the importance that each firm gives it's identical position would differ and that makes the model difficult to adapt.. but if enough research is done, I think this model can be used... but HR purists would object to viewing people as portfolio..however, here you are viewing only the skills as portfolio and the humans has to be viewed as humans only.Assigning weightages for each skills based on the individual traits might be bit subjective..but then there would be a measure to more precise recruitment, as you would be in a position to identify scientifically the important skills required for a position.The Best Indian Business School Blog