Instead of looking just at a candidate's years of experience or educational background when deciding who to interview, “skills-based hiring” considers both their soft and hard skills. Candidates' achievements and knowledge are more important than their connections or where they've been.
Many of the more conventional methods of locating potential employees are turned on their heads by skills-based hiring. This move will be more straightforward if you use some of the best practices for recruiting based on talents rather than experience.
Here are our top suggestions for you to consider.
Do a rewrite of your job descriptions.
It's better to focus on the tasks and results of your advertising role rather than the job criteria or necessary certifications. Make it very clear to the selected applicants what type of performance you anticipate from them and what skills they'll employ daily.
Early hiring skill tests
To ensure that you can test or at least validate a specific talent early on in the recruiting process, you must emphasize skills over all other screening characteristics.
Using digital credentials, you may confirm whether or not an applicant has specific expertise.
This, however, is not a universally applicable strategy. Adding a basic skills evaluation at the end of the application might also be an option to evaluate applicants' foundational skills.
Focus on talents in interviews
In most cases, hiring managers and potential coworkers can determine whether an applicant has the qualifications for a position. To help interviewers better understand a candidate's abilities and performance history, you should encourage them to ask more probing questions.
In some instances, this might entail employing structured interview questions to demonstrate a candidate's understanding of a given skill set or process. Inquire about particular job examples and outcomes that relate to the talents you're trying to develop. Interviewing other team members can help you gauge a candidate's ability, abilities, and knowledge more accurately.
Look at Demonstrable Skills
As a recruiting team, examine the findings of all screening rounds to identify which applicant best displayed the desired skill set. Select the applicant who performed best in each round of the selection process and has relevant work experience for the position you're looking to fill.
Prioritize the development of new talents.
It's essential to keep in mind that once a new employee joins your organization, they'll be expected to grow. All employees should access upskilling and reskilling options if your IT hiring agencies has prioritized skill development.
Learning and experimentation should be encouraged, and personnel should be given the resources they need to improve their abilities. Maintaining a watchful eye on industry trends will help you predict which departments and employees will need to be trained in the future.
Key takeaways
A fundamental adjustment in your hiring process and your IT staffing firm‘s definition of success is required to implement a skills-based hiring strategy. It might be difficult, but the rewards are well worth the effort, both from a business and a human standpoint.
