Organizations worldwide are facing increasing challenges in finding qualified team members due to a global labor shortage. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development discovered that 20 million fewer people are currently working compared to pre-COVID times. To address this issue, agile companies are turning to skills-based hiring, which allows them to identify, recruit, and develop highly skilled talent effectively.
What is Skills-Based Hiring?
Skills-based hiring is a revolutionary approach that evaluates potential team members based on their skills rather than their experience and education.
Unlike traditional hiring methods, this approach widens the talent pool by disregarding arbitrary criteria such as a specific number of years of experience or a degree.
“Employers should focus on skills when making hiring decisions and deemphasize degrees and connections”, says LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky. According to him, a skills-first mentality creates a much more efficient, equitable labor market, which then creates better opportunities for all.
Future-proof organizations use skill-based hiring with other programs, such as upskilling and remote or hybrid work for a more diverse talent pipeline.
What are the Benefits of Skill Based Hiring?
Skill-based removes unnecessary job requirements while focusing on the skills necessary for performing the job and collaborating well with team members.
- Because it removes artificial barriers, it can increase the diversity of your team. Diverse teams are often more creative and innovative because team members offer different perspectives.
- Having broader cultural or regional knowledge within your team can also increase business opportunities.
- Employees whose skills match their jobs tend to be more engaged and stay with the organization longer.
Implementing Skill Based Hiring
Skill based hiring requires rethinking your recruiting process from beginning to end.
Rewrite Job Descriptions
The first step in skill based hiring is to rewrite job descriptions to focus on responsibilities and critical competencies and eliminate irrelevant requirements that might be a barrier to qualified people applying.
According to Josh Bersin, skills fall into several categories: technical, operational, functional, industry proficiency, and communication or people skills such as leadership.
Communicating in multiple languages is becoming a critical skill for many organizations. Bilingual employees help companies expand and generate content for new markets.
They also often bring a unique cultural perspective. Studies also show that bilingual employees can switch tasks more quickly than monolingual ones, making them assets in a rapidly changing business environment.
Proactively Search
Successful recruitment requires a proactive search for candidates. Rather than simply listing a job on a job search site, develop relationships with sourcing partners such as certificate programs and professional organizations whose membership is primarily minorities.
Company executives should also attend industry conferences regularly and seek to meet highly talented people.
Organizations that need a particular skill should consider attending conferences or events in geographic regions that are hubs for those skills.
Reduce Unconscious Bias
Often, companies screen resumes quickly, especially with AI advancements in the last few years.
Unconscious biases can creep into the process unless you develop screening criteria and match them against the applicant’s skills.
Don’t necessarily eliminate candidates who have most of the skills but are lacking a few. Resume space is limited, and candidates may list only some things.
Develop a Structured Interview Process
Ask each candidate the same questions in the same order to ensure you compare them to the same criteria. Ask open-ended behavioral questions; for example, tell me about a time you had to persuade someone to perform a task differently.
Run Skills Assessment Analysis
Create your own skills assessment. For example, if you are looking for a software engineer, ask them to complete a code-writing challenge.
Be sure to validate the assessment for efficacy and accuracy and ensure it doesn’t screen out potential hires on unfair or irrelevant criteria.
Reconsider Background Checks
If background checks are too detailed, they may provide irrelevant information your team unconsciously uses to weed out potentially talented applicants. Make sure the background check focuses only on factors relevant to the job.
Be Flexible
Be flexible about work arrangements. The best employee for your team may live far away and be unwilling to relocate, for example. Or, they may prefer to work six hours during the day when their child is at school and two hours at night after the child is asleep.
If labor costs are an issue, your organization may find a talented team member in a different country where the cost of living is less. Not all jobs are appropriate for remote or flexible work, but those employers who offer these options will have an advantage in recruiting.
Offer Development Opportunities
Employees also want to join companies that will help them further develop their skills. About 75 percent of Generation Z workers say they will leave jobs that do not provide skill-building opportunities. More than half of all workers say they need upskilling opportunities.
Upskilling and re-skilling are critical for a future-thinking organization, as well. Leadership teams should regularly map the skills they have in the team against future needs and find ways to fill any gaps with training.
Developing people for future openings within the company is often less expensive than recruiting for those positions outside the company. Upskilling also improves employee engagement and morale, which, in turn, improves productivity and retention.
The most successful companies offer employees various upskill opportunities, including functional, digital, and soft skills, such as communication and relationships. They also use different learning methodologies.
Voxy can be a valuable upskilling and re-skilling partner. Voxy provides English language training and professional upskilling simultaneously. Team members can access the training at any time.
Voxy also provides a data-based service that maps skills gaps and identifies the language needs of each role. Reach out to request a demo.
