Skill-Based Hiring: Finding The Best Talent

If we tell you we make a mean lasagna or were Head Lasagna Chef at a fancy Michelin Star Restaurant…

You still have no idea how well we make it - because the proof is in the eating.

Recruitment and talent teams have recently woken up from their carb comas and had a similar epiphany:‍

If we want to find the best person to perform a role, we need to hire for skills.‍

Not degrees. 

Not pedigree.

And not whether they can reel off an answer in a test - that shows knowledge, not skills.

Which fundamentally changes how we hire from start to finish: from job descriptions to interview tasks and even the onboarding process - skill-based hiring really is the best way to find the best person for the job.

What is skill-based hiring?

It’s the idea of focusing on skills as the primary requirement for a new hire.

We’re not discarding their job roles or the qualifications they’ve earned, but we’re saying that the person in this role needs X, Y and Z skills.

So we have to find people with those skills, and test them for those skills in the hiring process.

It’s a reaction to the fast-changing world, the emergence of new skills and the shorter life of the current skills we have.

And the competitive talent landscape that makes it more challenging for employers to find good-fit people.

The big three benefits of skill-based hiring

You find high-performers who then perform highly in the role

“Employees hired through skills-based hiring are 2.8x more likely to be high performers in their roles compared to those hired solely based on their formal education or pedigree.” - Major Players.

Why? Because we have built an interview process and task that tests the skills they need to perform in the role. 

And if they excel in that task, there’s a higher likelihood that they’ll do well once they’re in the business.

You get a better return on your hiring spend, by hiring those better-fit people

Fundamentally, you’re increasing the likelihood that you’ll get a better ROI on your hiring efforts.

These numbers speak for themselves (and make your case for a shift to skills-based hiring much easier).

• 88% of businesses reduced mis-hires with skills-based hiring.
• 82% reduced their time to hire.
• 89% of employers improved employee retention.

The likelihood of hiring the wrong people decreases because they’ve evidence that they have the skill to perform tasks associated with the role.

It’s understandable that time to hire goes down because you’re not spending that extra time finding people with the same job title and then trying to figure out if they have the skill.

And if someone performs well in the role because they have the right skill, that sense of purpose drives retention.

You’ll access a wider, more diverse talent pool

When you stop looking for someone with ten years in a similar role or with this exact qualification, you’ll be amazed by how much your talent pool expands.

Some of the best content creators are self-taught. There are amazing personal trainers with no formal qualifications. Best-selling cookbooks are written by people who’ve never cooked in a restaurant, but have made their kitchen a far better place to eat.

Formal qualifications and higher education are no longer the only way to build a skill!

In fact, given that less formal types of learning - like YouTube videos, podcasts

How to do skill-based hiring well

So, you’re sold on skills-based hiring!

The question is, what does that process look like for a role?

Well, here are the simple, no-BS steps you need to take.

Step 1: Establish the skills needed for the role.

Tasks are a great place to start! What are the tasks associated with that role and which skills are needed to perform those tasks effectively?

You’ll also need to consider the level of proficiency needed in that skill.

A marketer who only needs to send press releases once or twice per year doesn’t need to be an expert in PR. 

If the bulk of their work is writing content that ranks highly in Google search results, they will need a high proficiency in SEO.

Both skills are needed, just to different extents.

Typically, tasks are downstream from goals and objectives. What are we aiming to achieve as a team and as individuals in that team?

That influences the tasks, which influences the skills needed.

Oh, and you’ll need consistent definitions of what a skill means in your organisation.

Step 2: Bring those skills into your job descriptions.

Whether people are applying to you or you’re out there looking for talent, it’s crucial that your job description is clear on the skills needed.

And you’re able to add real context by explaining the tasks related to that skill - because that’s the thought process you’ve followed.

Step 3: Skill-based interviews and tasks

Once you’ve found those candidates who potentially have the skill, we need an interview process that allows them to evidence that they have it and to what extent.

Traditionally, the trouble is we’re often testing for knowledge - not skills.

Here’s a knowledge-based assessment: prove to us that you know how to do something.

Which normally just prompts people to regurgitate answers, but rarely gives them an opportunity to apply a skill! Or show us their proficiency in it.

Think back to those tasks and goals, and build any assessment and interview questions around the ones that are the most-common, most-important and highest-leverage.

What does a skill-based assessment look like?

Let’s imagine that you’re hiring a Content Marketer to focus on e-books and guides. 

That person would need good copywriting skills, but they’d also need the strategic chops to plan it out and the ability to distribute the content to drive sign ups.

So, a skill-based interview task might ask them to plan out a guide. 

From the topic and who you’d need to collaborate with, to the guide’s content and a solid distribution plan.