Adopting a Skills-Based Hiring Approach:
Five Tips for Getting Started
In light of these challenges, consider the following five key ways to begin incorporating skills-based principles into your tech recruitment and internal mobility operations. While they will be most effective as part of a holistic and organization-wide skills-based hiring strategy, recruiters and HR leaders can start to gain some benefits by taking the following steps:
Tackle Your Potential Roadblocks Head on
Many HR organizations have spent years developing ideal candidate personas that include education and past role credentials. As a result, many veteran recruiters perceive candidates with a four-year degree to be less risky in their experience than candidates with non-traditional backgrounds. It will take dedicated change management, evidence, and patience to change those mindsets.
Rethink Current Assessment Methods
Organizations used education and experience credentials because they were good proxies for knowledge and capabilities. In their absence, HR professionals will need some other way to assess candidates to confirm they either have the skills you need, or they have the ability to develop them. That transition may require new training for recruiters in different interviewing techniques, as well as investments in assessment tools and approaches.
Inventory Your Skills Gaps
Urge hiring managers to help you understand their hiring needs, and prompt them to identify the skills that correspond with an open role or title. Work with them as well to help you identify transferable skills to look out for on applications. As we deemphasize the traditional recruitment practice of letting education and job titles serve as proxies for expertise, we need to develop new ways to spot compelling tech candidates and communicate why they are appealing.
Identify Non-Traditional Sources for Skills
Look to non-IT functions or business units that already employ talent with the high-demand skills your organization needs to fill tech roles. Leverage talent analytics platforms to identify “adjacent skills” to the ones you hope to develop — candidates who already have adjacent skills can more easily upskill to the skill you need. Finally, engage with trade schools and community colleges to develop curricula or hold job fairs to spot high-potential recruits.
Adjust Your Resume Review and Interviewing Approach
The challenges of changing mindsets and assessment approaches translate in part to adopting new ways to evaluate resumes and conduct interviews. Without the ability to rely on degrees or traditional career milestones, recruiters will need to conduct skills-based interviews designed to assess some of the skills candidates will need. It is important to also coach hiring managers to do the same.
Explore Creative Ways to Fill Skills Gaps
Filling new roles with permanent candidates, whether internal or external, cannot be the only way that an organization fills its skills gaps. At different times the organization may enact hiring freezes, or the pool of candidates is just too small or too expensive to fit needs. Instead, embrace the skills-based mindset as part of a three-part talent management approach that includes hiring candidates, developing new high-demand skills in existing team members, and “renting skills” through consulting or staff augmentation firms.
Find and Hire Tech Talent with the Right Skills
The future is powered by tech professionals. From automation to machine learning, the talented people behind tech are revolutionizing industries and shaping our world. To keep up, you need the people who can harness this power – the tech talent behind the innovation.
The only problem? It can be hard to know where to find them (let alone how to recruit them). That’s where Dice comes in. We are the tech-specialized hiring platform that drives connections between the teams that need to fill roles and the tech professionals with the skills to be a good fit.
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About Dice
Dice is a leading tech career hub connecting employers with skilled technology professionals and providing tech professionals with career opportunities, data, insights and advice. Established in 1990, Dice began as one of the first career sites and today provides a comprehensive suite of recruiting solutions, empowering companies and recruiters to make informed hiring decisions. Dice serves multiple markets throughout North America. Dice is a DHI Group, Inc. (NYSE:DHX) brand.