Skills-based hiring is increasingly common. Companies identify the skills required for a job, and use that skills inventory to evaluate candidates, rather than rely on specific college degrees or possibly any degree at all. A skills-based approach has the potential to be a practical strategy, but can it build individual skills into a winning combination?
Skills-Based Benefits
According to Workday, companies that hire based on skills may see increased productivity, improved employee satisfaction and retention, and overall better company performance. It’s not just tangible skills that the recruiter and hiring manager must assess in an interview. Forbes says the evolving nature of work increasingly demands the development of practical skills, such as collaboration, building trust, and assessing productivity by outcomes vs. butts-in-seats. And let’s not forget the unknown future skills we’ll need in an AI-dominated world.
Forbes recommends several actions to leverage a skills-based approach:
- Compile skills inventories, for the skills you need now and in the future.
- Create internal networks to recognize and communicate talent across the organization and provide opportunities for people to move and/or take stretch assignments outside their current role.
- Develop technical and interpersonal skills across the organization. Technical skills without the skills to build trust and collaborate won’t get you very far.
We’ve certainly tied all that skill-based stuff into a neat little bow. Hmmm… But then why isn’t this blog post finished? There seems to be more to this story.
Slight Hitch in the Algorithm
There is one teensy-weensy problem we may have overlooked with all our focus on skills-based hiring: We don’t hire skills, we hire people, and we are more than the sum of our parts. When we look at skills independent of the whole person, it’s like breaking down a Formula 1 racecar into its component parts to determine its potential to win a race. Are the components of a car important? Of course! The tires, engine, chassis, and of course the diffuser are critical to performance. (I had to look up what a diffuser is.) But these components do not run in isolation of each other. Moreover, if we only look at the parts, we miss a critical factor to winning the race: the driver. Even if a person checks all the skill boxes, they need to integrate their skills to achieve high-performance. —Integrating skills is also a skill. There are at least three areas where our checklist could fail: strengths, development, and fulfillment.
Capitalize on Strengths
We are most successful when we leverage our strengths. Just because we have a skill doesn’t make it a strength. Can we identify someone’s greatest strengths from a list of skills? Can we even identify our own strengths? I’ll use myself as an example. Three of my strongest skills are listening and insight, integrating diverse information into a meaningful whole, and humor. –Humor is my superpower. Three of my weaker skills are noticing visual details, runny statistical analyses, and physical gracefulness. –Lack of gracefulness could be my downfall, literally.
Imagine I’m in a role that requires me to lean into my weaker skills, such as a research assistant, strategic marketing analyst, or performing as hippopotamus #3 in Disney’s live-action production of Fantasia. While dance is not actually a skill listed on my resume, I was a research assistant and also a strategic marketing analyst for several years. I had the skills to be “good enough” in those roles, but I was never going to be a rock star. However, once I learned to recognize and appreciate my strengths, I focused my career on training, leadership development, and coaching. My performance skyrocketed.
Take-Away: A checklist only captures the skills we have, not which skills might be our greatest strengths.
Development is a Work in Progress
Employee development is touted as a key factor as to why people are attracted to companies, stay at companies, and leave companies when they don’t see development opportunities. In a rapidly changing world, we need people who strive to develop their skills and themselves. But if we only look at a checklist of existing skills, how do we know a person’s future potential? How do we know their motivation to learn? Can we help them develop the skills they’ll need? The skills the company will need?
Too often when leaders look at their bench strength, they don’t have a successor ready and willing to step up. Instead, they look around and think, “Hmmm… I don’t have anybody who can be ready in the next six months to take my role. (sigh) Looks like I’ll have hire/buy the skills from outside the company.” If we always need to hire an outside successor, we’re not developing our people. Not only will our best people leave, but hiring new, sparkly talent is more expensive than shining the skills of the diamonds in the rough around us.
Take-Away: A checklist only tracks the skills we have today, not the skills we can develop for the future.
Fulfillment vs. Skills
We’ve all had jobs we didn’t enjoy. We may have even been successful in some them. Years ago, I had a job I was really good at, but I was also miserable. I didn’t want to leave, but I couldn’t reconcile the disconnect. So, I talked with my manager.
“Why can’t I just like this?” I lamented. “I’m good at this.”
My manager, a wise mentor, counseled, “Being good at something and liking it are two different things.”
None of us likes every part of our work, but there is a difference between having the skills to do something, or even being good at something, and enjoying what we do. When we don’t enjoy our work, we feel drained and disengaged. Even with our best intentions, we will have less impact when we feel unfulfilled. When we enjoy our work, we’re more focused, committed, and motivated. We work harder and yet it feels less like work. How much more valuable is an employee who is not only skilled but fully engaged, passionate about their work, and committed to growth?
Take-Away: A skills checklist can indicate what we’re good at but not where we thrive.
Take Action
If a skills checklist could give us everything we need to hire and develop people, work and life would be much easier. But a checklist can’t do that. So, what do we do? Here are a few tips:
A Tool Not a Decision-Maker. A skills inventory is a helpful tool, but we can’t rely on an inventory to assess a person’s overall fit for a role or the company. We have to look at the whole person, rather than a list of their parts. And even when we have the best skills inventory, skilled recruiters and expert hiring managers, we will still sometimes hire people who aren’t right for the role. We can’t be 100% sure any candidate will succeed until they’re doing the work. It’s frustrating but normal. No skills inventory can ensure success.
Open and Honest Conversations. We have to talk with people to get to know them, both in the hiring process and developing our team. When we have crazy schedules and more work to do than can ever be done, getting to know each other as people often feels like a luxury. But every conversation doesn’t have to be a grand formal affair. We can grab a cup of coffee or have lunch. We don’t have to spend a week at an offsite or even an hour each week 1:1 to get to know someone. However, when we regularly cancel our scheduled one-on-one meetings with employes, we damage our relationship, negatively impact their engagement, and make it far less likely we’ll get to know them as a person.
Pay Attention to Interactions. Pay attention to how your employees engage in their work, interact with colleagues, and handle challenges. You may recognize hidden skills, such as problem-solving abilities or leadership qualities, that you might have missed on a skills inventory. You may even recognize skills and strengths people hadn’t recognized in themselves.
Living Development Plans. We’ve all written development plans that check the box in the employee management system but are never used to guide development. Collaborate with employees to create a development plan that is actually useful. (radical concept, I know) Talk with people on your team about their skills, what they enjoy, how they want to grow. Tailor development plans, projects, and growth opportunities to the person. A development plan must align with both the objectives of the organization and the employee’s personal goals, including the skills they want to develop, and their career aspirations.
Build a Winning Team
Even when we hire people with great skills, strengths, potential, and motivation, we must build an environment that supports peak performance. We need to cultivate a company culture, leadership mindset, and daily practices/procedures that create an environment where people will develop new skills, grow, and win. (MIT Sloan Management Review) Even with the most talented driver and the fastest car, the racetrack we build is crucial. Quality of the surface, limited barriers, and good visibility around the curves are essential to high performance. Finally, a strong pit crew can make or break a race: leaders, managers, teammates, and peers are all crucial to a driver’s success. A Formula 1 race is an elite competition, and no one wins it alone.
