Companies have always been hiring for skills. But why has the topic become so hot in recent times? In a tight talent marketplace, companies need to reach further to attract more candidates, tap into diverse talent pools, and keep up their hiring velocity – and hiring for skills is one way to do that. And as they hire for skills, organizations can also attract people with the skills that will build the organization of the future as jobs shift and change.

In any area of business, there are multiple ways of thinking that no longer serve in the current marketplace. One of those areas in talent acquisition is the insistence upon a certain number of years of experience or educational pedigree. Both hiring managers and recruiters can get stuck in these requirements, limiting their ability to attract talent that has the capacity to do the job but lacks the exact pedigree. Hiring for skills helps you get over this outdated practice and focus on transferable skills and the candidate’s ability to develop them in the workplace.

The good news is that hiring for skills doesn’t require a massive investment in technology or a complete overhaul of your talent management processes. What it does require, however, is optimizing the essential steps of recruiting so that you focus on skills as part of a whole-person assessment strategy. Here’s how.

1. Start with Job Profiles & Job Descriptions

The easiest way to get started with hiring for skills is to start small. By starting with one job profile and one job description, you can build an iterative process to bring a skills-based approach to your talent acquisition processes.

The first place to look is your job profiles. Articulate each skill needed to do the job, and then consider, if candidates really need a degree or a certain number of years of experience to succeed in the role. In positions relating to finance, medicine, law, or data science, degrees and certifications may be required. But for others, looking at skills instead of pedigree forces you to think about what is actually needed to carry out the job’s tasks. It could have little to do with what they studied in college or if they went to college at all. Then, craft your job description to clearly communicate the skills needed for the role and eliminate unnecessary requirements. For more, check out our article, How to Write a Skills-Based Job Description.

2. Include Skills as Part of a Whole-Person Assessment

A potential employee consists of more than their skills. They have behaviors, competencies, preferences, interests, motivations, and experiences that contribute to their profile as a best-fit candidate. Skills are just one lens of many that you need to look through. Acknowledging this fact will help you define what is actually needed for each role in a way that you may not have previously.  This includes candidate interest, ability, and internal needs of the business and the team.

For example, a person may require technical skills for a role as a customer support technician, but they may also need to have a natural aptitude for empathy and understanding as they troubleshoot customer issues. Not only that, they have to be motivated to use both soft and hard skills throughout the day. Otherwise, they will feel drained by the job and be a poor fit. So the assessment for this position would include both skills and the candidate’s interests and motivations.

3. Design an Assessment Strategy

An effective assessment strategy defines what capabilities, behaviors, and skills you will assess at each stage of the hiring process. It also includes how each of these criteria will be assessed, by whom, and through which tools as candidates move through the hiring funnel. 

Your assessment strategy may include pre-screening questions, test-based assessments, and interview questions relevant to the role. It should align with a hiring scorecard to facilitate an objective evaluation process. An assessment strategy will include a map of each step along with roles and responsibilities. 

4. Ensure Consistency at Each Touchpoint

The most beautiful assessment strategy will not work without buy-in from every person in the interview process. Make sure that each person – sourcer, recruiter, hiring manager, and interviewer –  knows what skills and competencies they are responsible for assessing. 

Clear assessment criteria and a standardized method for documenting it will go a long way toward making whole-person hiring with an emphasis on skills effective. 

5. Communicate Continuously to Build Alignment

It may feel like over-communication, but regular discussion among stakeholders will help you build a skill-based hiring muscle and a better recruiting process overall. You may find that you have to revise processes, assessment strategies, scorecards, or interview questions as you go. 

In your communications, continually come back to what you set out to do in the beginning: assess candidates on skills and competencies needed by the company, in the role, and on the team. Frequent communication will help everyone stay aligned as candidates progress through the hiring funnel and final selections get made.

6. Let Technology Help Lift the Load

You might be surprised that your current tech stack can help you hire for skills – or that adding on one assessment tool offers a powerful way to level the playing field among candidates. Look for tools that help you assess candidates objectively, build a structured and unbiased interview process, and standardize feedback collection. 

As your company builds its skills-based hiring muscle, you may start to consider tools that focus on skills throughout the talent lifecycle. But if you miss the essential aspects of a strong hiring process – effective job profiles,  a clearly defined assessment strategy, and consistent execution of it – those tools will not fully realize their purpose. 

Features of the SmartRecruiters talent acquisition suite that can help you hire for skills include.

• Easy-to-configure screening tools expand talent pools by allowing for a skills-based approach rather than filtering people out by irrelevant qualifiers. 
• Candidate scorecards level the playing field by guiding hiring managers on skills-based interviewing. Scorecards make it easy for teams to collaborate, ensuring an efficient and objective hiring process that can help you hire more diverse talent.
• Integrations with leading assessment providers allow interviewers to view assessment results alongside candidate profiles, ensuring that skills are accounted for at every step.

Want to learn more about hiring for skills? Read our ebook  A Practical Guide to Hiring for Skills.

You’ve probably heard about hiring for skills, the latest trend in talent acquisition. Companies face a tight job market, high turnover, and widening skills gaps as technology and business needs evolve. In a recent survey, Deloitte found skills to be the number one recruiting strategy concern for CEOs, and second only to inflation on the full list of business concerns. 

Every person that a company misses out on hiring is a missed opportunity to drive bottom line results. Korn Ferry predicts that companies could miss out on $8.5 trillion in global revenue by 2030 due to labor shortages. In this competitive market for talent, it’s clear that organizations need a different approach to hiring.

What is Hiring for Skills and Why Do You Need to Do It?

Hiring for skills is a recruiting strategy that focuses on the candidate’s transferable, real-world skills and competencies rather than an educational pedigree or list of previous roles. For example, consider the vast array of skills a military veteran might acquire during their service that might not directly correlate with a traditional job description. When you build hiring for skills into your candidate selection process, that veteran’s skills won’t be overlooked.

Hiring for skills widens your talent pools and helps you hire more diverse talent faster. In today’s world of work, waiting to move forward with skills-based hiring will keep you from seeing the full potential in candidates. When you hire for skills, flexible talent will grow and shift with your business instead of being stuck in the rigid box of overly-defined job descriptions.

Skills-based hiring includes conducting a skills inventory for key roles, writing skills-based job descriptions, and ensuring that skills-based assessments are incorporated into your candidate selection process.

Adopt the Right Mindset for Skills-Based Hiring

What’s the best way to get started? According to Allyn Bailey, Executive Director, Hiring Success at SmartRecruiters, the place to start is with expectations – your mindset. Any hiring for skills initiative is an exercise in change management. In our new ebook, A Practical Guide to Hiring for Skills, Allyn offers these tips to keep in mind as you take on the challenge: 

1. Hiring for skills isn’t a one-and-done process. Looking at jobs through the lens of skills and developing effective skills-based assessments is a living, breathing process. Don’t be frustrated if it doesn’t operate perfectly out of the gate. Start where you can and then iterate, test, and learn as you go and your organization’s approach to skills evolves.
2. Align, communicate, realign, and then align again. Continual communication among all of your hiring team stakeholders throughout this process will reduce barriers to change, get you searching for the skills you really need, and keep the process going. 
3. Let technology help lift the load. Examine your current tech stack and consider whether you may have any tools that can help you assess candidate skills or structure an unbiased, effective interview. See where your software and tools can automate some of this standardization so you can focus on identifying skills and leading change management. 

Even if you aren’t ready to start skills-based hiring now, you can start by reading our ebook. It offers a map for incorporating skills assessment into every stage of your hiring process, from the job description to the final candidate selection. 

Can an Applicant Tracking System Help You Hire for Skills?

A study by the Harvard Business School noted that 80 percent of business leaders say their applicant tracking systems filter out half of high-skilled candidates due to system parameters like résumé gaps or missing credentials. That doesn’t need to happen when you use a top-notch ATS. 

Using the SmartRecruiters approach to Hiring Success will help your company hire for skills. Features of our talent acquisition suite include:

• Easy-to-configure screening tools expand talent pools by allowing for a skills-based approach rather than filtering people out by irrelevant qualifiers. 
• Candidate scorecards level the playing field by guiding hiring managers on skills-based interviewing. Scorecards make it easy for teams to collaborate, ensuring an efficient and objective hiring process that can help you hire more diverse talent.
• Integrations with leading assessment providers allow interviewers to view assessment results alongside candidate profiles, ensuring that skills are accounted for at every step.

Skills-Based Hiring is Here to Stay

This topic is unlikely to go away – it’s more likely to expand over time as organizations rethink job architecture, career pathways, and hiring practices. As job seekers look for roles that align with their skills and competencies, moving away from hiring by role and resume and into a hiring strategy that focuses on skills, competencies, and whole person assessments helps you stay ahead. 

Start futureproofing your organization today by downloading the ebook, A Practical Guide to Hiring for Skills.