Skills-Based Hiring Requires Commitment to Change

Change Management Faces Obstacles

The first—and most important—step to implement skills-based hiring is to shift thinking. "The change management piece will be the hardest part," Field said.

Any significant workplace culture change must start with leadership, from executive champions and leaders in HR and talent acquisition, to hiring managers who will ultimately be responsible for making it happen. 

"Think about a hiring manager—they are trying to fill a job, often an immediate need, and their goal is to find someone successful in the role," Field said. "The reality is that hiring managers are not talent assessment experts. So it's important for recruiters to guide hiring managers along the journey and help them understand the 'why' of skills-based hiring: that it will get them highly qualified talent in the role when they need it."  

Safstrom outlined three key barriers that keep employers—particularly small and midsize ones—from adopting skills-based hiring, even when they say they want to:

• Existing systems must be overhauled, which can be challenging and expensive.

• There's a lack of trust in partners. "Technologies, vendors and credentials are flooding the space, but there is no complete mechanism for vetting quality, regulating product or inspiring trust," she said.

• Scaling is hard. "Making large shifts in fundamental ways of hiring is falling to overworked HR leaders who often must create solutions alone, instead of in concert with others," Safstrom said.

However, building and investing in centralized, enterprise-level solutions can make scale possible and reduce risk. "Aligning employers, service and tech providers, educators, policymakers, and funders can drive practice and change," Safstrom said.

Employers can do the easy things immediately, such as broadening sourcing channels and removing college degree requirements from job ads. But a skills-based approach will also require a long-term plan that encompasses an organization's entire talent acquisition and management systems.   

Match Skills to Roles

To get skills-based hiring right, employers will initially need to develop a skills strategy.   

"First, you need to understand the skills that your business needs," said Jennifer Shappley, vice president of global talent acquisition at LinkedIn. "Then understand what skills your employees have, or that they can develop, and what skills you need to hire for so that you build your talent strategies accordingly."

HR, working closely with hiring managers, will need to conduct a skills analysis for each role to understand the core skills needed on day one and the ones that can be taught later, as well as a matrix for all roles to determine which skills are essential for progression in the organization.

"When you know which skills are most predictive, you know what is needed to get started and what can be trained," Field said. "For example, a plant shift manager needs to have a process improvement mindset [and] needs to be wired to think that way. But they can learn the specific process improvement practices of that company on the job."

Evaluate for Skills, Not Personality

Traditionally, interviewers have relied on candidates' past performance to predict future performance. But evaluating candidates' soft skills through structured behavioral interviewing and building objective assessments for hard skills, such as coding tests or writing assignments, are better ways to evaluate candidates based on their skills, experts said.

Recruiters and hiring managers will need to be trained on how to evaluate for skills, Briggs-Paige said, while applicant tracking systems that screen out qualified people will need to be modified. Using valid skills assessments will also be important.

Janice Burns, chief people officer at Degreed, a learning experience platform in San Francisco, said most assessments used today are psychometric assessments that measure personality and aptitude, not skills. This gets into dangerous territory, since employers are not in the business of developing or upskilling someone's personality, she said.

"While aptitude is not technically biased, aptitude preference as a basis for making employment decisions does carry bias," Burns said. "Skills assessments are very different in that they align with what people need to do and how well they need to do it in order for them to perform a task or job. Skill requirements should be based on the work that needs to be done and/or task that needs to be completed."

Assessments are one part of the solution, Briggs-Paige said, "[b]ut skills credentials can also help hiring managers be comfortable hiring people without degrees."

There's a lot of work happening right now to develop and promote skilled credentials, including efforts by the SHRM Foundation.

Upskill on the Job

Continuous skills development is the final component of a skills-based talent management approach. Employers will be responsible for turning potential into performance, stepping in and helping employees acquire the skills they need to succeed. Organizations can provide professional development resources, opportunities and support from the first day on the job to show new hires that they're invested in their success.

"Upskilling is critical to getting skills-based hiring right," Field said. "Upskilling does not just mean providing classroom training on a subject. It means learning on the job, learning from the manager in the flow of work."

According to Briggs-Paige, skills development programs show that many low-wage roles require skills similar to middle-wage roles, and middle-wage roles require skills used in high-wage roles. "Managers realize that most workers already exhibit the core skills needed to move into higher roles, whether they have a degree or not," she said.

Fortunately for employers, an intentional upskilling focus from the onboarding stage through training and promotions will also likely boost internal mobility and increase retention, as surveys show that most employees say they are more likely to stay with a company that invests in their career.

Source: SHRM