A Skills-Based Approach to Hiring And Developing Talent

Learn more about a skills-based approach to talent management and how it could help your business better identify and retain quality candidates to meet your staffing needs.

The professional landscape is virtually unrecognizable compared to just five years ago. Technology is evolving at an unprecedented rate, and the global marketplace is becoming increasingly reliant on digital interactions with consumers.

This evolution has led some experts to predict that approximately 50% of employees will need to be reskilled over the next five years, according to the World Economic Forum. Additionally, 40% of the core skills that current professionals use to carry out their primary job responsibilities may no longer be relevant in a few years.

The rapid transformation of the professional ecosystem has led many employers to develop a skills-based talent management strategy. This approach differs when compared to traditional methods that typically only look at scholastic education, past credentials, or non-recent work experiences. It provides employers with the agility necessary to manage the real-time abilities of their workforce, which can help them ensure business continuity over the next decade.

Skills-Based Talent Management Vs. Traditional Talent Management

When it comes to hiring, traditional talent management strategies vet applicants based on their degrees, the quality of their resumes, and their interviewing ability. While these practices can provide surface-level information about applicants’ skills and talents, they do not effectively measure their real-world aptitudes or job fit.

Traditional talent management is often ineffective when upskilling and reskilling existing staff or selecting individuals for promotion opportunities. When determining who to promote, upper-level staff typically base their decisions on tenure and subjective opinions of an employee’s performance.

As the name implies, skills-based talent management measures candidates solely based on their professional abilities. This eliminates guesswork and vague speculation about possible candidates and minimizes the possibility that subconscious bias could taint the process. Employers can instead identify candidates who have the right experience, rather than basing hiring and promotion decisions on certifications, education, or past work experience.

Skills-Based Talent Management For Hiring And Employee Development

When used appropriately, skills-based talent management significantly can improve the way organizations hire talent by helping hiring teams identify top applicants and move them to the next stage of the hiring process.

Upskilling or reskilling employees is the No. 2 focus for Learning and Development leaders in 2022, according to findings from LinkedIn Learning. This means organizations need to develop strong employee training programs to ensure they’re fostering growth among their teams. Developing a skills-based talent management strategy could assist these efforts. For example, problem solving, resilience, and adaptability are skills that have never been more in need than they are today.

Employers should assess their staff’s current skills and abilities. They can then use this information to identify training needs and implement employee development programs tailored to each employee’s needs and career goals. This enables employers to make promotion decisions based on merit instead of subjective factors so they can select the best person for each job.

Developing A Skills-Based Talent Management Strategy

According to Deloitte, approximately 45% of organizations reward their staff for acquiring new skills and abilities. However, only 14% of businesses plan to deploy a strategy that pays for skills. This disconnect is a concern because skills-based talent management provides a way of mitigating potential unconscious bias, thus increasing opportunity equity and protecting business continuity.

Organizations interested in implementing a talent management strategy that focuses on talent should reevaluate how they define job roles. This will entail creating new job descriptions that focus on talents and skills, instead of degrees and certifications, and training managers to apply this line of thinking to staff training and identifying “promotable” employees.

After an organization has created a comprehensive talent management strategy, it must develop a way to measure skills. This means taking a look at your current screening tools and seeing how you can implement skills and behavioral assessments that make sense for your organization. Make sure you’re measuring learned abilities and talents. Getting an insight into an applicant’s personality traits can help employers determine whether candidates are a good cultural fit for the organization.

You make better-informed decisions about hiring, training, and development, and coaching your employees when you know what skills you need in your organization. Hiring and reskilling for the necessary skills to thrive in today’s business environment means that employers need to adapt to the changing job landscape and plan for the future.

This article was written by Eric Friedman from Forbes and was legally licensed through the Industry Dive Content Marketplace. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@industrydive.com.

This article is licensed content that was created by a “third party” not affiliated with Santander Bank, N.A. (“Santander”). This article is for promotional purposes only. Santander does not provide investment, business, financial, accounting, tax, or legal advice, and the content of this article does not constitute investment, business, financial, accounting, tax, or legal advice. Santander does not make any claims, promises, or guarantees about the accuracy, completeness, currency, or adequacy of any content. Santander expressly disclaims all express and implied warranties of accuracy, completeness, currency, or adequacy of the information and content in this article. Readers should consult their own attorneys or tax or other advisors regarding the applicability of any referenced information, or financial or other strategies to their own unique circumstances. This article does not necessarily reflect the views or endorsement of Santander. Please note that third-party websites may have privacy and security policies different from Santander; please review the privacy and security policies of such websites.

Santander Bank, N.A. is a Member FDIC and a wholly owned subsidiary of Banco Santander, S.A. ©2022 Santander Bank, N.A. All rights reserved. Santander, Santander Bank and the Flame Logo are trademarks of Banco Santander, S.A. or its subsidiaries in the United States or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Topics: