Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Building the Next Generation of Skills Inside Your Company

It’s common for employees to want to build skills at work, but an effective learning infrastructure isn’t as common. As organizations grow, they tend to lose track of their people’s skills. Leaders don’t know the competencies employees have acquired at work, what they can do next, and the skills they can develop to grow their contributions to the organization. 

Employers often don’t dig too deeply either, preferring instead to seek fresh talent externally when a need presents itself. But even if the current job market could support it, it’s difficult to maintain the hiring pace needed to source emerging skills from the outside. This reality leads to persistent understaffing and longer role vacancies.  

It’s imperative to build a skills-based organization that can flex to evolving business and employee needs. But where to start? 

The following five strategies may prove helpful as you seek to solve today’s labor shortage conundrum with your own reliable and already proven workforce. 

Understand the size and composition of your workforce 

Using analytics programs, employers should determine the current internal and external trends in workforce supply and demand. Examine the gap between the skills possessed by your workforce today and the skills your business requires to be successful now and in the future.  

It might be beneficial to use a skills segmentation matrix that includes the variables of scarcity (how common or uncommon the skill is in the market), criticality (how essential or non-essential the skill is for work to be successfully completed), and volume (how much volume of this skill the business requires).  

Seek feedback on your matrix from a diverse group of stakeholders across the organization, and during your investigation, determine the in-house superstars in in-demand areas. You can then enlist the help of these employees in crafting appropriate strategies and training to boost the organization’s overall level of skill competency. 

For the rest of the article, head over to the Dayforce blog.

Essential New Read: The Skills-Powered Organization

My friend Ravin Jesuthasan is a leading voice on skills-based employment. His latest book, The Skills-Powered Organization: The Journey to the Next-Generation Enterprise, which he cowrote with Tanuj Kapilashrami, is an essential read for leaders who are in the difficult spot of touting the importance of skills without fully understanding how to shape their organization accordingly. This Q&A with Ravin captures some of the highlights, and I hope you’ll pick up a copy for a deeper dive.

Ravin, now did you come to collaborate with your co-author?

Tanuj and I have known each other for about 4 years. We both sit on a couple of committees at the World Economic Forum and have long had a common interest in how skills can unlock significantly greater productivity, agility and engagement. My interest and the ideas in this book stem from and build on the four books I have written with my good friend John Boudreau. Perhaps most importantly, we wanted to write a practitioner’s guide. A book that was rigorous with research and frameworks AND clearly demonstrated how leaders can make these changes in their organizations

Can you share why you have focused your content on skills?

The growing volatility and velocity of change in the world necessitates a different set of building blocks for work. The IMF estimates that uncertainty over the last 3 years is up 2.5X over the previous 30 years. For companies, crisis is no longer a one-off event, but a recurring one. Think of the 4 shocks we are experiencing today: 

• The climate crisis
• The energy impact from the invasion of Ukraine.
• Geopolitical issues with China and the Middle East
• The technology shock and especially AI

All independent events but with massive feedback loops. Each of these 4 shocks is world shaking, but cumulatively happening in a 18 month period, puts us in unprecedented times. In Work Without Jobs, John Boudreau and I introduced the concept of a new work operating model and this books builds on an extends that idea with a deep dive into why skills need to be the currency of work; in order to enable organization to respond (and thrive) in this rapidly changing world of ours

What does this journey look like for a typical organization?

In our research we identified 3 core capabilities of the skills-powered organization. The capability of work design is essential to understanding the true demand for skills and how they can best be connected to work. Talent development is pivotal to ensuring skills are acquired in a timely and efficient manner based on the demand signals from work design. Last, talent deployment is the critical capability of enabling the expression of the demanded skills across a variety of work engagements with optimal efficiency, effectiveness, and impact

How did Standard Chartered Bank get started and what can its experience teach us?

As I mentioned, the thing that was attractive to me about partnering with Tanuj was to tell the story of a progressive organization that was bringing these ideas to life and fruition. Standard Chartered is a 170-year-old, leading international banking group with a rich history and legacy.

For Standard Chartered, the skills-powered journey started with transitioning the narrative from jobs to skills. It began with a commercial business case based on its own strategic workforce planning analysis, highlighting the jobs and skills within the organization that would soon no longer be relevant (which it refers to as “sunset” roles). This might be due to changing client expectations or the evolution of technology and automation of tasks. New jobs and skills would also be created and demanded as a result (“sunrise” roles). The strategic workforce plan (SWP) also highlighted the broader impact of the changing demand for skills—the disproportionate displacement of junior roles and the resulting cost implications as the organization shifted from a pyramid to a diamond shape.

Additionally, it highlighted the potential impact on gender diversity due to the higher number of women currently employed in sunset roles and with many sunrise roles being currently more male dominated. The tangible economics of “build” versus buy versus borrow versus bot,” and the far-reaching impact of decisions related to upskilling and reskilling, created a compelling foundation for the board and the global management team who made skills a critical element of the overall strategic plan.

What do you believe leaders who want to build a skills-based organization should do first?

As we often say, you have to eat the elephant one bite at a time. There are 3 things we defined as being pivotal to this journey:

1. Establish a North Star to anchor your journey: So, what do we mean by a North Star? It is a clear statement about your vision to guide your direction and program of work to becoming a skills-powered organization. A North Star is simple and enduring—it is your touchstone to ensure you remain on track and is clearly aligned to addressing specific business needs.
2. Experiment, experiment, experiment: We have seen through the Standard Chartered examples the power of prototypes and experiments in enabling the shift in mindset, skill set, and toolset. Experiments are critical for testing and applying the design principles underpinning the skills-powered organization before they are deployed across the organization
3. Focus on the key enablers of success: Too often organizations believe the answer to any problem is to throw technology at the problem. We define 8 critical enablers for this journey (including AI and technology):

•  Leadership (where every change journey starts)
•  Governance
• Employee engagement in the journey
• Culture and change management
• The HR function and its role
• Functional processes, such as finance, IT, and legal
• Technology and AI
• Foundational enablers (e.g., skills taxonomy and data)

Thanks, Ravin! 

The Future of Jobs in the Age of Adaptability

Around 20 years ago, leaders started to ask me if nascent AI-based technologies would eliminate the need for human workers. My response then was the same as it is now: not quickly and not totally.

Nevertheless, human jobs are transforming at a rapid rate. According to a 2023 McKinsey report, in the period from 2019 to 2022, the labor market in the U.S. alone experienced 8.6 million occupational shifts. This is a 50% increase from the prior three-year period, and by 2030, an additional 12 million shifts are projected. McKinsey also estimated that 30% of all hours worked by humans today could be automated by 2030.

It might be simpler if the march toward an AI-driven future meant that all human workers would eventually lounge their lives away on cruise ships – depending on technology for their very existence as in the 2008 Pixar movie WALL-E. In reality, though, humans will continue to work as we always have. The work will just look different.

The exact manner in which human jobs are evolving is driven by organizational concerns around profit and productivity. As we shared in our 2024 Age of Adaptability trends report, companies seeking to boost flagging human productivity must focus on finding the right blend of people and technology. We can do this with a thoughtful approach to job redesign and how human work can best be distributed and evaluated in the near future.

Job Redesign

I briefly talked about job redesign in the first article in this series. Job redesign is the process of rearranging or replacing tasks to better align work with real-time conditions inside and outside the organization.

While leaders may be focusing a lot of attention on job redesign now, the need for it is not unprecedented. For example, the bookkeeper job, once essential for every organization no matter how small, was redesigned in the 1980s to reflect the widespread adoption of accounting software. Back then, if you were a bookkeeper who wanted to remain gainfully employed, you had to determine how to add value beyond the software’s capabilities.

To be fair, job redesign is a more complex proposition today because the onslaught of AI-based technologies in our workplaces is impacting a larger number of jobs. But the transition shouldn’t be overwhelming, as the progression to more complete AI integration is occurring more slowly than most people think. Despite the excitement around generative AI, for instance, practical use cases are still limited. Industry analysts at Gartner even predict that in the next few years, we are likely to fall into a “trough of disillusionment” regarding what AI-based partners can do and what they can’t.

Many organizations have already learned the hard way that strategic job redesign does not involve blunt force – or bringing in a new piece of automation or an AI-based software program and letting go of all of the human employees related to that function. The most effective job redesign initiatives assign smart technology components to handle straightforward, repetitive tasks while human employees remain to provide essential oversight.

Firms like Accenture have already quantified how this shakes out. According to a recent analysis on the impact of generative AI, a current human customer service role can be broken into 13 distinct tasks. Of those 13 component tasks, four must still be fully performed by humans, four could be fully automated, and five involve human and machine partnership. Although Accenture didn’t say this, I’ll point out that the five partnered tasks require substantially more human skill than the four transactional tasks technology is replacing.

For the rest of this article, check out the ManpowerGroup Global Insights blog.

The Future of Skills in the Age of Adaptability

In ManpowerGroup’s 2024 Age of Adaptability trend report, we shared how current demographic shifts are exacerbating labor shortages. Specifically, by 2030, members of Generation Z (born 1996-2012) will compose 58% of the workforce and a majority of the large baby boom generation will have retired.

The resulting knowledge deficit means it’s paramount to forecast the future of skills and use this understanding to fill gaps as efficiently as possible. However, for all of the talk about skills-based organizations – which deconstruct traditional roles, break them down into component parts, and then hire people to handle each part – the progress toward this shift in protocol isn’t as rapid as some would prefer. Between now and 2030, the evolution to a true skills focus will be gradual, and not as simple as merely declaring yourself a skills-based organization.

In this piece, we’ll explore how in the near future, the composition and acquisition of an in-demand, workforce-wide skills portfolio can move organizations toward the goal of a skills-based organization.

Skill Composition

The future of skills is complex and rapidly evolving. According to the World Economic Forum’s 2023 Future of Jobs Report, 44% of workers’ skills will be disrupted within five years.

But what skills will be most essential in a world of global, distributed, and automated work, where more surprises are likely around the corner? WEF’s 2023 research found that the hottest skills from an organizational perspective include cognitive and analytical thinking, creative thinking, self-efficacy (resilience, flexibility, and learning agility), curiosity, empathy, social influence, and quality control.

It’s notable that technical AI and big data skills ranked of lower importance than all of these. Why is this the case when AI-related skills are the third highest priority in company training strategies from now until 2027 (nine percent), and the top training priority for companies with more than 50,000 employees?

Leaders may be realizing that it’s not the hard AI and automation skills themselves that are most critical, but the ability to have an effective partner orientation toward working with smart machines. In other words, honing our human “soft” skills is the best way to differentiate our capabilities from AI’s capabilities and provide competent and ethical oversight to the technological “employees” in our workplaces.

In a 2024 LinkedIn Pulse article, systems engineer Arif Sheikh agreed with this take, suggesting that as AI-based technologies automate a greater number of tasks, the value of traditional human skills might at first seem to diminish. But this perspective overlooks the foundational role such skills play in personal development, social interaction, and professional experience.

Sheikh suggested that individuals who learn to navigate social interactions without social media before relying on these platforms will have better outcomes. “This highlights the importance of direct, human connection – a nuance that AI, for all its sophistication, cannot fully replicate,” he said.

In any case, it’s likely that by 2030, the most marketable employees will be those whose skillsets are a blend of job-specific competencies and those that make it possible to work successfully with machines and other humans in a variety of contexts. This means that in terms of training dollars, we might want to put the horse before the cart.

We should also note that within the next ten years, a majority of jobs will have a green component, which may require the development of new skills such as carbon footprinting, sustainability consulting, and climate data analysis across a large swath of industries and functions.

For the rest of this piece, please visit the Manpower Group Global Insights blog.

 

Talent Intelligence Platforms Use Deep Learning to Close Skills Gaps

The HR community is enthralled by the idea that artificial intelligence (AI) can provide tangible benefits in the quest to effectively source and hire in a tight labor market. But how does this work in practice? 
 
It starts by understanding a branch of AI called deep learning. Deep-learning algorithms, which are inspired by the actions of the human brain, continuously analyze data with a given logical structure. This structure encompasses multiple layers of algorithms called neural networks. 
 
Deep-learning algorithms can’t predict the future or give answers that a human would agree with 100%. Yet they are still valuable. If you’ve ever used a modern search engine and been amazed by the results or if you’ve ever watched the perfect show recommended by your streaming network of choice, you have experienced the power of deep learning. 
 
The main challenge of deep learning is data — specifically, the massive amount required. The talent space alone needs billions of data points about people, career trajectories, skills, and experiences. 
 
But while AI’s reach was once limited by computing power and the availability of data, that’s no longer the case. Today, global neural nets can identify more than a million skills across the world’s 8 billion people. 
 
Then, using this data, AI engineers can develop deep-learning algorithms to determine the best answers to a defined class of questions. In the case of deep talent, such questions might include: Who is the best fit for this specific job requirement? What job is this individual most likely to hold next in their career? 
 
Understanding deep learning’s ability to harness a massive amount of data is only the first step, however. Next, we must explore how deep learning can help us identify skills and transform how we hire people. 
 
The Power of Skills Adjacency 
 
Skills adjacency refers to the inference that a person good at skill A often excels at skill B, and it helps us complete our picture of a human’s true potential and the transferable skills they possess. 
 
In my recent book, “Deep Talent,” my co-authors and I tell the story of Nico Iannotti, a top sales engineer in Europe. Nico wasn’t always involved with either sales or technology. He was, however, previously involved with customer service as a sommelier and waiter. As he put it, skills are interchangeable assets that individuals can leverage in a variety of industry roles and life situations. 
 
“Many of the skills I acquired prior to my corporate career have been very helpful in my role as a client-relationship manager and solution engineer,” he told us. “What is the link between pairing wines and selling software? Both are customer-facing roles, and both provide solutions to a customer’s problem. In both cases, you are building relationships, demonstrating empathy, and selling an emotional experience based on a specific budget. It’s just a change of context, not a completely different skillset.” 

For the rest of the piece, head over to the UKG Workforce Institute.

Don't Be Intimidated by Job Redesign

The need for job redesign is on most HR leaders’ radars in 2024. But in most organizations, it still seems to be more of a talking point than a reality. However, given that Dayforce’s 14^th Annual Pulse of Talent survey found that 37% of respondents said there is a different role with their current employer that better matches their skillset, the process seems ripe with opportunity.

Job redesign is the process of rearranging or replacing tasks to better align work with evolving conditions both inside and outside the organization. And it’s really nothing new. For example, the telegraphist or telegraph operator was one of the first tech-related jobs of the 19^th century. The telegraphist used the most modern equipment available at the time to send and receive Morse code via radio and telephone.

In the 1970s, the telegraph was mostly replaced by telex, a communications network to send text-based messages. So, if you were a telegraphist and you wanted to remain gainfully employed, you had to adapt and learn telex. In other words, the telegraphist job was redesigned with a lot of the same skills and responsibilities – minus the telegraph.

Job redesign may feel more complex and overwhelming today because the pace of technology is faster and has a broader impact in terms of affected occupations. In particular, the arrival of generative AI has leaders wondering exactly how to execute job redesign to incorporate the benefits of this technology.

Before we get into how to make the process more turnkey, let’s address what job redesign is NOT. For example, job redesign is not bringing in a new piece of automation and letting go of all the human employees previously involved in the job targeted by the automation. When integration of automation is done well, the technology takes over more straightforward, repetitive tasks while human employees provide the necessary strategic input, creativity, judgment, and oversight. And that’s where job redesign comes in.

Three practical steps for job redesign
In most knowledge-driven and in many frontline worker occupations, shifting business requirements and emerging technologies mean that employees need new skillsets. Therefore, the process of job redesign involves understanding the individual tasks that encompass the work being done, and then matching or training for skills necessary for those tasks.

Step one: Engage in task analysis

Target a small category of jobs to start, and then assemble a diverse group of stakeholders from across the organization. Make sure this group includes people across levels, and not just leadership, so you have representation from those who are close to the work.

Document the critical tasks currently associated with each job, and note where there are redundancies, areas where technology could be efficiently deployed, and places where you can build a job to become more flexible in structure and environment. You can also rank your tasks according to importance, how often they are performed, how long they take, and the skills required or how people learn how to do each task.

Step two: Create new job titles and descriptions

Next, based on your analysis, group related tasks into new job buckets. With smart technology now helping in new ways with some tasks, there may be room to remove or combine previous jobs. This may involve creating new “super jobs” that cross departmental lines. For example, the new job of people analytics manager might be technically housed in HR but include tasks traditionally housed in IT such as selecting appropriate technology applications, ensuring data quality, and communicating data-related insights to leaders and other constituents.

You can also use this exercise as an opportunity to standardize jobs titles and descriptions across the organization.

For the rest of the piece, head over to the Dayforce blog.

Giving Second Chance Hiring a Chance

Every year, more than 600,000 men and women are released from prison in the United States and nearly one-third will return to prison within three years, according to an article by Crystal Yang in the American Economic Review.

However, employers can take steps to turn that percentage around and mitigate ongoing labor shortages in the process.

Pete Keller, founder of United Legion One Nation (ULON), a nonprofit dedicated to helping the formerly incarcerated become productive members of the community, said that if these individuals can secure gainful employment within the first 30-90 days of their release from prison, we can reduce recidivism from 45% to 17%.

After serving four stints in the penitentiary, Keller recalled being released back into society stripped of everything he needed to rebuild his life. “Being labeled as a felon meant that no one wanted to give me a chance or even extend a helping hand,” he said.

Second Chance hiring refers to the act of employing individuals – including the formerly incarcerated – whose life choices and situations have disadvantaged them in obtaining stable employment.

American food company Dave’s Killer Bread embraced Second Chance hiring after founder Dave Dahl was welcomed back into his family’s bakery following a 15-year prison sentence.

“We have now dedicated ourselves to advancing Second Chance employment, or hiring the best person for the job, regardless of criminal history. We’ve seen first-hand the transformative power of a job and the positive ripple effects on the broader community,” said Dan Letchinger, business unit senior vice president.

Letchinger said that Second Chance hires demonstrate dedication and loyalty every day when they come to the bakery and are passionate about the opportunity to learn and grow.  He cited an “attitude of gratitude” as one of the drivers of this population’s strong work ethic.

“We have found that the performance of employees with criminal backgrounds is often at the same levels or higher than their teammates. And in many cases, these individuals are actually promoted at a faster rate,” Letchinger said.

Despite the benefits, Second Chance hiring is still relatively uncommon. This is mostly because many organizations have a policy of terminating qualified talent solely based on arrest or conviction records. Some states such as Illinois have “Ban the Box” laws, which prohibit private employers with 15 or more employees from asking about criminal history until after an interview or a conditional offer.

Unfortunately, Keller shared, once background checks are conducted, employers often terminate employment due to the disclosure of prior convictions.

“This creates a cycle of disappointment and uncertainty for these individuals who were hopeful for a fresh start in their professional lives,” he said.

Employers do not need to wait for new legislation to be passed to protect and support formerly incarcerated individuals.  And given that labor shortages in most occupations are likely to persist through the coming decades, Second Chance hiring can be an important tool to deepen available talent pools. These guidelines may be useful when considering it.

Understand your mission. Keller reminded employers that Second Chance hiring is not a charitable endeavor, but rather a deliberate plan to enhance staff retention and enjoy the benefits of hiring individuals who are motivated to work despite facing numerous obstacles.

Consult nonprofit organizations. Groups like Jobs for the Future, Refoundry, and ULON can provide essential resources to clarify and execute an effective initiative. “They’re dedicated to educating employers to help them develop a better understanding of the whys and hows of implementing Second Chance Employment hiring practices,” said Letchinger.

Provide unbiased training. A comprehensive, proactive approach that includes all layers of management and staff will ensure that your organization is truly an equal opportunity employer and that diversity, equity, and inclusion becomes embedded in your culture, said Keller.

Have a candid conversation. Letchinger said that when trying to look past candidate backgrounds, it’s worth speaking to the individual about their personal path and being alert to signs that suggest an individual is ready to change.

This piece was originally published in the WSJ Workplace Report.

A New Era in Tech-Based Recruitment

Communicating with the passive candidates whose email addresses you’ve stored in your CRM isn’t a new idea. Taking a page from the marketing team’s playbook and segmenting those candidates into groups based on a common qualifier (location, career stage, etc.) isn’t necessarily new either.

What has changed in recruitment segmentation, however, is the power of technology to help talent professionals do it more effectively. First of all, since recruitment segmentation came onto the talent acquisition scene as a popular strategy, the ability to automate email campaigns and customize their cadence to the individual has grown far more sophisticated. This is done by creating intelligent workflows.

According to IBM in a recent white paper, intelligent workflows are processes created by combining artificial intelligence and predictive analytics to enable organizations to segment candidate pools and decide how to modify the experience based on the candidates’ expectations and needs.

Organizations can use segmentation and automation hand in hand to design the recruitment experience based on candidate availability, work effort and experience and to provide different levels of service at the right point in time in the hiring process.

“Automation is especially crucial in terms of speed of engaging candidates — and keeping them engaged throughout the entire process,” wrote the IBM authors. “Even with higher unemployment rates, top candidates are in high demand, and competition to hire is fiercely competitive. Organizations that do not automate the process to the degree that it both entices and meets the candidates where they are are likely to see top recruits accept offers with competitors.”

The IBM authors pointed out that by deploying intelligent workflows, HR leaders can access real-time information that gives them a complete picture of their labor and talent pools. The strategy also allows for a more conscious approach to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). “Instead of having to wait for historical data and react to changes that have already occurred, recruiters can create and change experiences to open doors for candidates in ways previously not possible,” they said.

They cited the example of one company that shifted from a center-based employment model to a co-location model, which meant that 40% of their employees would work virtually. But many employees in contact center positions preferred working on site, and attrition occurred.

The company then used segmentation to determine talent availability and virtually manage the recruiting process through texting, self-scheduling and video interviews. Because so many of the organization’s employees did not want to make the move to remote work, the organization added a personalized touchpoint to encourage top talent to remain in the pipeline. As the organization examined the data and was informed of the shift in preferences, recruiters adjusted their approach to improving hiring success.

Of course, the best use of software-driven intelligent workflows incorporates human recruiter creativity. My favorite example is from a Recruiting Daily blogger, Christine Hampton. She has used intelligent workflows to segment and automate communications to passive candidates by, among other things, the rejection reason and recruitment event.

“If a candidate tells me they are on a contract till December, then slamming them with jobs right now will just frustrate them,” she wrote. “I note if the candidate is interested, and I set up a multi-channel cadence to stay in touch till their contract is complete.”

Christine explained that you can have separate segments for a myriad of rejection reasons – “just started a new job,” “happy in current role,” “can’t meet salary requirements,” etc. Not only does this approach align with future recruitment marketing campaign messaging, but it also saves time and creates a platform for starting personal conversations with candidates.

She added that if you’ve been recruiting for a while, you have likely attended many events. “You meet a candidate at a job fair, and they pique your interest, but the timing isn’t right. Three months later, an opportunity arises, and you think, ugh, what’s the name of that lady I met three months ago? She had red hair, about five feet five inches, and had glasses,” she said. “I am sure I’ve had a few missed connections in the past before the CRM existed.  Now I keep a folder for the specific event and date, and the candidate is easier to find (and communicate with).”

The bottom line is an ironic one. In this new era of recruitment segmentation, the best TA professionals will leverage technology to become even better at developing strong human relationships with their top candidates.

To learn more about how to leverage technology to build a stronger talent pipeline, check out my recent webinar with SilkRoad and ERE Media!

Trends Shaping Talent in 2023

Now that we’re into the second quarter of 2023, we can see that the talent acquisition (TA) world has a different tint. Despite the specter of recent layoffs and a looming recession, widespread skills shortages and a low overall labor force participation rate (LFPR, or the number of people in the workforce or actively looking for work) mean that organizations have had to deploy more innovative recruitment strategies.

These trends are reaching critical mass:

Internal Mobility

When it comes to lateral moves and internal opportunities, most organizations have always talked a good game. However, in practice, managers were more likely to hoard top talent. A poor infrastructure often restricted employee movement from one team to another, even if a manager was supportive. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, leaders recognized the utility of redeploying workers from a slow area of the business into a more viable one. Since then, internal mobility has gained momentum.

This year is different due to the more widespread usage of technologies that drive internal mobility – namely, talent intelligence and predictive analytics. Rather than waiting for an individual employee to express interest in a given position, artificial intelligence allows leaders to proactively determine who within the existing workforce might have the right skill set to meet a current or near-future need or who could be easily trained to do so.

Executive Freelancers

The professional contract workforce has been growing for the last decade, but traditionally, freelancing was mostly limited to individual contributors in professions like writing, marketing and information technology. Because these workers usually completed work that could be more narrowly defined within the scope of a “project,” this made sense.

In 2023, however, pervasive contract work has expanded to other professions, including law and finance. We are increasingly seeing organizations using “interim” c-suite executives to take over for a leader who is on leave, to trial a new hire for fit, or to temporarily fill the position while they search for a permanent hire.

Unfortunately, it is still the case that organizations often treat contract workers as second-class citizens. But as they become a more significant percentage of the employee mix, TA leaders must leverage technology to nurture their relationships with this population and deliver the appropriate opportunities, training and communications.

For more trends, or to check out my recent webinar on talent intelligence, head on over to the SilkRoad blog.

The Future of Skills-Based Hiring

A few weeks ago, I attended a dinner where some colleagues emphatically insisted that the future of hiring could not and would not become skills-based until organizations stopped selecting people based on educational pedigree.

I pointed out that this is already happening. When I graduated from college in the late 1990s, you had to have a bachelor’s degree to get an entry-level professional position. It didn’t matter what skills you had. Today, depending on the role, if you can show skill competency, many organizations will overlook a lack of formal education.

The real question is: Have we moved the needle enough to combat ever-increasing global labor shortages? The answer may indeed be no, and that’s likely because there’s no sense of urgency. Many organizations still think the traditional mode of hiring – via resumes and follow-up, subjective interviewing – works just fine.

Let’s look at the problems with the status quo and how your organization can reap the rewards from a new approach to talent acquisition. Skills-based hiring will be the future, but there’s no time like the present to move in that direction.

The trouble with resume-based hiring

Resume-based hiring has a variety of flaws, namely that people are notoriously bad at self-assessment. A resume only captures a small amount of what a person has done and can do. And even if their skills are presented somewhat effectively, the hiring manager may be negatively influenced by factors like what font the candidate used and whether too many words are crammed onto the page.

Resumes (and LinkedIn profiles) also capture just one moment in time. This means that unless a hiring manager is reviewing information that was just sent to them by a candidate for a specific job, the hiring manager has no idea how current the information is.

Finally, resume-based hiring assumes that the organization wants to hire someone for a static role. The hiring manager wants to see straightforward evidence that the candidate has already performed this role because they aren’t expecting it to change much. But this is an outdated view of jobs. Today, employers must approach hiring with career flexibility in mind.

Organizations need to hire people with as deep of a skills bench as possible so that those employees can move fluidly through the organization as business requirements evolve. It's hard to assess how well someone will be able to do this from a resume.

But if an organization isn’t going to hire employees based on resumes and wants to get to the heart of the skills candidates possess today, how can this be achieved?

How to get started with skills-based hiring

I’ll readily admit that skills-based hiring is a difficult task without technology, and specifically, without artificial intelligence. But new talent intelligence platforms allow organizations to leverage career data points to paint a much broader picture of the skills a given individual might have. Talent intelligence tools also allow organizations to focus on the skills necessary for success within a particular career path, which might not always be what human hiring managers think they are.

This technology is especially good at uncovering skill adjacencies. Using skill adjacency, you can infer that a person who is good at skill A often excels at skill B. For example, we can infer that someone who is good at trigonometry is probably also good at geometry. Or we could guess that an experienced marketing professional could more quickly learn public relations.

The rise of the flexible career experience

 

For recruiters who are accustomed to resume-based hiring, this is a whole new world. For example, when a company is hiring for a customer service manager, a recruiter may search for candidates with resumes containing that exact title. Until recently, we simply have not had the tools to surface candidates who may have the right customer skills based on their life experiences instead of the positions they’ve held.

By focusing on workers’ capabilities rather than exact job titles, companies can build a broader pool of diverse, qualified candidates. This is an especially useful approach post-pandemic, given that most workers accumulated a wide variety of transferable skills inside and outside their main jobs in the areas of communication, problem solving, and adaptability. Skills like this support success in any role but may not be found on these candidates’ resumes, so it’s wise to have another way to account for and assess them.

In short, hiring based on educational pedigree and resumes is the past while hiring based on skills and potential is the future. And technology can go a long way to help us transform hiring practices – both culturally and operationally.

For the original article,  head over to the Ceridian website.