IN THE RESUME OF THE FUTURE, SKILLS (NOT DEGREES) WILL BE PARAMOUNT
The Skills Economy is changing the way organizations identify and evaluate job candidates. One thing is clear: The traditional resume is no longer adequate.
Say goodbye to the typical “education" section on the resume. According to a recent study from Deloitte Research, recent college graduates today enjoy a salary premium as a result of their degree—but that might change in the near future.
“In a tightening labor market," the researchers wrote, “smart employers should carefully catalog the skills required for the occupations they hire and screen for those skills rather than accepting a bachelor's degree as a proxy for them."
What's more, the rapid pace of technological change is forcing employees to evolve their skills beyond their degrees. A B.A. in computer science doesn't necessarily prove a candidate is up-to-date on the latest programming languages. And in some cases, candidates need to acquire skills for entirely new roles and titles, from machine learning engineer to UX writer to brand activation manager.
To prove they have the right skills for any given role in the future, workers will need a new kind of resume, one that includes more specific demonstrations of their abilities. The resume of the future might include a list of their specific coursework over holistic degrees, short-term project work instead of company tenure and peer ratings to substantiate soft skills.
Evolving the Resume to Reflect Continuous Learning
Employee credentials have to keep pace with the rapid changes taking place in the workforce—and according to research from PwC, post-college courses have the potential to close that gap.
“What any hiring manager is looking for is: Can you do the job?" Usually, in the past, the best signal was your work experience and degree. The skills that people need on the job are changing rapidly, so people need alternative ways to demonstrate those skills.
Employers and human resources managers in the future will have access to information about the classes their employees have taken and how they've performed across a variety of skills. For instance, the HR manager could see which programmers performed particularly well in Drupal, and make decisions on what projects to assign that person based on this granular data.
Already, the number of individuals engaging in coursework outside of major degree programs is on the rise. In 2017, number of paid learners using MOOCs (massive online open courses) grew 70 percent, and Udacity reported 50,000 paid students in its Nanodegree programs. And companies are beginning to take these programs seriously.
Incorporating A Soft Skills Section
In addition to more up-to-date, more granular representations of hard skills, companies need ways to identify a candidate's soft skills. Rather than rely on tenure at one company as an indicator, peer reviews might act as more detailed indicators of the candidate's strengths and weaknesses.
Consulting companies such as Accenture and Mphasis are already using peer review data for internal hiring. Colleagues rate their coworkers in terms of specific criterion, such as who's a team player and who shows leadership skills. In turn, HR gathers workers into temporary teams for one-off projects.
They feed that into their systems to determine not just who's easy to work with or not, but what are the right teams to form.
If we have to imagine the rating system of the future could look something like that of Airbnb's for hosts. A number of areas on Airbnb—cleanliness, responsiveness, etc.—are given number ratings instead of just one overarching number for the host's quality. This granular data gives visitors a much clearer picture of what they're getting before booking a night's stay. The same could be said of hiring a candidate.
“Skills that will be important to consider are those like leadership, organization and dependability," adds Elvis Ha, Manager of product management at Cornerstone. “This will be a drastic change from the generally positive peer reviews we see on places like LinkedIn that only tell one side of the candidate's story."
The Road Ahead for New Credentials
The growth of project-based and gig work will likely increase the relevance of this skills-based approach to the resume in the future. In the meantime, there are still a host of questions to be answered about how candidate's skills will be accurately represented on the resume of the future through coursework, peer reviews and project work. Tech human capital consultant Babette Ten Haken, for example, expressed concern that peer review ratings might oversimplify a worker's skills.
“I'm not a great believer in standalone numbers," Ten Haken said. “They have no understanding of the complexity of the organization: Was the project complex or simple, or a horrible team?"
It creates opportunities for anyone willing to work hard. In the future, as things get more quantifiable, it means even if someone didn't go to a top school they will have access to the same opportunity whether they went to community college or Stanford—and that's really exciting.
Associate VP - Legal
4 年While I largely agree with you, it may be difficult for a recruiter to assess the depth of skills that a jobseeker claims to possess. That's because a recruitment process, even if thorough, has its own limitations. A good educational institution assures the company that the candidate is above a threshold. Because not everyone is good enough to get into a good school. Then again, I think I contradicted myself. Good schools might miss out on good candidates because of limitations in the admissions process!! All in all, very well written.
Project Management | Education | Capacity Building | Content Development | Foundational Literacy
6 年May be true in in terms of big company. But unfortunately in small company and in development sector 90% recruitment is done on the basis of references. HR dardly sees the CV arrived in inbox after advertisement. Advertisement is just done to showcase so called transparency and audit purpose. Everyone are recruiting in hurry and as per their style means telephonic /skype /face to face / only verbal /verbal and written etc. Hardly HR has dedicated time/process to find out skills in the jobseeker.
Leading Global Immersions for B. Schools & Building Digital Learning Initiatives
6 年This thought actually can establish more ground for skill based resources than qualification based resources. I know for sure there are tons of unemployed who cannot furnish a certificate, but are capable of excelling well if an opportunity is given. This model will surely give way for that opportunity.? Well written Anupam !
SEM Practice Lead @ Glassroom | SEM Supervisor, Senior Manager
6 年This is of course ridiculous, gaining new skills is based on a persons ability to learn new things. If you can’t do that then how are you going to learn new skills? Since everyone has to start somewhere (from zero usually) how can you hire them if you have no indication in regards to their learning ability unless they can tell you they have a degree. There is this preconception that a degree does not add anything to a persons value to a business. Nonsense! It tells you in the very least that they had the tenacity and consistency to complete a degree, which clearly not everyone is aware off, is a rather difficult task cause it lasts 3 to 4 years. Just because you “succeed” in your career without a degree doesn’t imply that a degree would not have been beneficial to you and vice versa.
SDE @ DP World | Data Science @ BITS Pilani
6 年Well said!?In companies like Tesla, LinkedIn, they hire by an academic process of evaluating a person's cognitive and emotional capabilities into a 30-minute game-playing scenario. Basically, candidates complete brain tasks (like puzzles or quizzes), the results of which they parses to come up with measurements of things like the person's problem-solving skills, ability to multitask, and level of altruism. That's another interesting approach.