Beyond Skills-based Hiring

Hiring for skills. Skills-based hiring. Skills-based organizations. Moving from jobs to skills.

If these phrases sound familiar, it’s because they’ve been the talk of the town in the talent-acquisition and talent-management world for a couple of years now. At conferences, on webinars, on blog posts, you’ve heard a lot about skills.

Hiring for skills, not titles or past employers, can be an effective way for companies to hone in on the candidates who fit its open reqs. But, it doesn’t always solve the application-overload challenge. What if you have 1,500 applicants and half of them appear to have the skills you need?

Some companies are using a more three-dimensional look at job candidates. That’s helping them narrow the candidate pool to just the right people. For instance:

• Boulevard, a SaaS company. Boulevard’s Gina Blair used “3D” data attributes such as ‘has SaaS experience’ and ‘has startup experience.’ She set a list of targeted companies where she knew the best candidates might come from, and found talent she could not find any other way.
• KIPP Public Schools Northern California, a network of 22 free public charter schools, narrows its pool by searching for teachers with specific certifications, like a California math credential.
• Eikon, a drug discovery and development company, also turned to these 3D, or attribute-based searches. To advance scientific innovation, Eikon seeks scientists who understand technology, and software engineers who have life science degrees or experience with big pharma. It also is using AI to validate skills. If a candidate says they use Python, Eikon can see that if they have Github code contributions for Python, and experience at certain startups the company prefers, they’re a great match.

All three of these companies are hiring based on skills. But they’re going beyond skills-based hiring, achieving a quality hiring pool based on just the right attributes the companies are looking for.