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Eight Reasons Why Skills-Based Hiring Can Impact Department Workflow

Forbes Human Resources Council

While many companies believe education is vital in hiring a candidate, skills-based hiring can be just as important when recruiters are looking for talent. From positively impacting department workflow to diversifying talent and creating fair job opportunities, skills-based hiring expands companies' recruiting stage to land the right person for the position.

Many companies don't know the other benefits that skills-based hiring can bring. Below, eight Forbes Human Resources Council members share those benefits and explain how they are positive.

1. Helps Your Business Grow

The bottom line is, we need to consider everything an applicant is bringing to the table, not just their education. Do they have potential? A willingness to learn? Transferable skills? These qualities are just, if not more, important. Being open-minded when you recruit and provide new starters with an opportunity to grow means they are more likely to grow your business in return. - Alan Price, BrightHR

2. Impacts Your Department Workflow

You need to hire the best person for the job and removing the restriction that comes with focusing only on tertiary education improves your chances of doing just that. Having the right person in the role will not only positively impact your department workflow, but the team can then enhance their contribution to improving your company's bottom line. - Natalie Gleeson, LIWA Trading Enterprises LLC

3. Creates Post-Hire Benefits

Skills-based hiring saves recruitment costs by shortening the time to fill and increasing sourcing ROI by widening the funnel. Hiring for skills also creates post-hire benefits. For example, you can make more targeted investments in learning and development initiatives for skill deficiencies or increase team-level productivity by proactively adding skills that complement existing skill sets. - Neil Morelli, Codility

4. Diversifies Talent And Creates Fair Opportunities

Elevating skill-based hiring diversifies your talent and creates fair and equitable opportunities across communities. You cast a wider net for talent and open the candidate aperture in a highly competitive labor market. Skill-based hiring advances skills for the future enabling accelerated transformation. - Britton Bloch, Navy Federal


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5. Identifies How People Execute Their Work

Skill-based and competency-based hiring focuses on how people execute their work. How we execute the work we do is truly what sets us apart and defines organizational cultures. Traditional hiring methods focusing on credentials don’t deep dive into the "how." You can have two equally credentialed candidates and one will succeed while the other fails because success is in the how, and not the what. - Barbie Winterbottom, the Business of HR

6. Increases The Candidate Pool

Skills-based hiring increased the candidate pool, increased diversity, sped up the hiring process and reduced hiring costs. Simply define the skills and experience required for the job, use those as prerequisites and focus on other value adds like agility, adaptability, ambition, drive, flexibility and creativity. These candidates are good long-term hires who tend to remain with us longer. - Gordon Pelosse, CompTIA, the Computing Technology Industry Association

7. Helps With Cost Savings

Hiring in this manner can have many positive outcomes impacting department workflow and the company's bottom line. Candidates that have skills-based hiring require little training, therefore, saving time within the onboarding process leading to contributing to productivity expeditiously. Companies can have positive cost savings as candidates without four-year degrees cost less to hire. - Charissa Cromwell, Visual Connections L.L.C.

8. Expands The Staff Efficiently

We have eliminated degree requirements for most positions at iHire. Through a combination of behavioral-based interviewing and work-sample tests, we focus on the skills a candidate possesses versus where or how they learned those proficiencies. In this exceedingly competitive labor market with businesses struggling to hire, we have been able to fully staff our company as well as grow diversity. - Lisa Shuster, iHire

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