Background. The paper is based on specifics of the professional activity of specialists of the State Inspectorate of Small Size Vessels of Russian EMERCOM (SISSV) is a highly demanding job that requires specific individual psychological features to successfully fulfill their duties. Such individual psychological features are important for experts, and also for candidates to the positions in the GIMS used as recruitment criteria.

The Objective. of the study is to identify job skills that determine the professional effectiveness of SISSV experts, to identify the relationship between job skills and career success and to determine psychological indicators strongly associated with success.

Design. An expert survey (N = 40) was conducted to determine psychological indicators that contribute to professional success of SISSV experts. We carried out psychological assessment of acting SISSV experts (N = 275) to determine the presence and the level of necessary skills. Based on expert assessments, the inspectors were assigned to either successful or unsuccessful groups. The resulting polar groups were compared using Mann-Whitney criterion. Correlation analysis (Spearman) was used to access the strength of association between professional success and job skills. We also used factor and regression analyses to model the structure of job skills associated with professional success of acting SISSV specialists and job applicants.

Results. allowed to establish reliable differences between the polar groups on following characteristics (p ≤ 0.05): intelligence, abstract and operative thinking, intellectual liability, attention characteristics (volume, concentration, selection, distribution). They were defined as job skills for SISSV experts. The results of correlation analysis (p = 0.01, p = 0.05) showed that the specialists professional success depended on the presence and level of formation of job skills. We determined the structure of job skills associated with professional success.

Conclusion. The obtained results may be used to optimize the processes of psychological monitoring and psychological selection of the acting specialists of SISSV of Russian EMERCOM and applicant for the position.