A framework for adopting a skills-based approach

- If you've seen a house's foundation being constructed it doesn't look like much more than a hole in the ground, but it's essential to building a stable and viable home. The same is true for a skills-based hiring initiative. The foundation has to be solid or your initiative will not succeed. In this video, I'm going to take you through a simple three-part framework that you can use to guide your skills-based hiring initiative. Let's go over a brief introduction to each part of the framework. But again, I'll go into more detail as you make your way through the course. Part one is about laying the foundation. Just like in building a house, working on the foundation may not initially feel as if you're making much progress, but the steps you take here will ensure success down the line. A strong foundation in skills-based hiring has three main component: a bold vision, a map of stakeholders and champions, and a plan for overcoming barriers. To craft your unique vision you will work with senior leaders to define what successful skills-based hiring will look like at your company, and then you'll develop a strategy that will inspire people to bring it to life. It's kind of like backwards planning. Once you have your vision in place, identify and cultivate skills-based hiring champions. Now, these are people at all levels of your organization who will help you socialize the concept. Your work here will be to map out a plan for engaging all of your key stakeholders. You'll also need to map out potential barriers. Plan ahead because you may encounter some barriers, both structural and relational. And plan how you're going to overcome them. Let's move on to part two, framing the house. Once you have your foundation, you need to develop and launch a skills-based hiring pilot. This stage is kind of like framing a house. You'll see the house take shape but it's not really complete. This pilot is your proof of concept, and it's your time to learn. The success of this pilot is going to help to gain more buy-in and more legitimacy for skills-based hiring at your organization. You'll start by picking jobs at your company that you know are a strong fit for skills-based hiring. Now, several factors can tell you that certain roles will be successfully filled using skills-based hiring, included committed hiring managers or a weak existing candidate pool. The key here is to do everything in your power to ensure the success of your pilot. We'll get into more details about how to create a pilot later in the course. Finally, part three, building the house. So in this stage, you're going to implement the lessons you learned through piloting, and scale up. This is where you actually build the house. You're going to work to roll out skills-based hiring across your whole company. Your scaling strategy here will include activating key internal champions, identifying sources of talent, investing in robust onboarding, and more. A full skills-based hiring rollout can take up to two years or more, depending on the size of your company. Sometimes when I lay out the house analogy to people, they get it. Their eyes widen and they begin to understand what I'm talking about, but they also begin to question whether this kind of initiative is worth the time and effort. Let me tell you, it is, because your efforts will result in new sources of talent and a fairer and more effective hiring process for your company at the same time. There are times in every construction project where I'm sure people question whether it was worth the time and the cost. They have these questions during construction but their fears tend to evaporate the day that they move into a beautiful new home.