By Ryan Roslansky
With the global economy experiencing massive change, companies are turning to improving or adding to their employees’ skills with a renewed sense of urgency. Success will require major shifts in thinking about how hiring and employee development are done.
The economic toll of the Covid-19 pandemic is expected to leave more than 140 million people out of work and another 1.6 billion at risk of income loss. Unfortunately, many of the lost jobs simply won’t return. At the same time, certain companies and industries can’t hire fast enough. Shifting to a skills-focused approach is a viable solution to the challenges the business world faces.
Workers often don’t realize that the skills they have developed for one job can be easily transferred to another—nor do employers. Take food servers who lost their jobs due to the pandemic. More than 70% of them have the skills needed to succeed in customer service, which is currently one of the fields with the most job postings on LinkedIn.
Evaluating employees and new hires based on their skill sets instead of their work history can help companies realize that they might already have the talent they are looking for. It also makes talent pools more diverse and hiring more effective.
This is the future of hiring and development. At a time when talent is the No. 1 commodity in business, companies can’t afford to remain stuck in old mindsets. Here are three ways companies can add to or improve the skills of their existing workforce and take a skills-based approach to hiring new employees:
Support new career paths for your employees:
Many large enterprises around the world have viewed the need to add to the skills of their current talent as urgent for the last few years and have heavily invested in “future proofing” their employees. For example, JPMorgan Chase added $350 million to its $250 million plan to further educate its workforce. Amazon.com is investing more than $700 million to provide additional training to its employees. PwC is spending $3 billion to add to the skills of all of its 275,000 employees over the next few years.
If your company is unable to support a structured learning program, encourage managers to find out what other areas of the company their employees are interested in learning about and help them participate in cross-functional meetings and projects. Allow them to spend 10% of their work time on that cross-functional work.
Don’t wait for the next crisis to begin the process of reeducating employees for critical roles. Employees who see good opportunities to learn and grow are 2.9 times more likely to be engaged. Creating internal programs that identify and address skill gaps not only helps prepare for future disruptions but also helps your strongest and most dedicated employees feel secure.
Give employees learning time and reward
According to a June 2020 survey conducted by Glint, a human resources software company owned by LinkedIn, an overwhelming number of employees—97%—want to expand or at least maintain the amount of time they spend learning. Executives and managers should make it clear that ongoing education is integral to personal career growth and can be done on company time. To help foster a learning culture, encourage employees to block out calendar time for learning each week or month—and do the same.
It can be stressful to juggle learning with looming deadlines and client needs. Remind yourself and your team that the investment in learning will pay off in the long term, and give specific guidance in employee growth plans. For example, an employee can make it an end-of-quarter deliverable to spend four hours each month on learning courses. Some businesses also promote learning programs with contests and incentives. Rewards, whether monetary or symbolic, can boost employee participation considerably. Executive and manager participation is a must—it’s crucial for us to lead by example. Even putting the most recent course you watched below your email signature signals to employees that learning is a priority for you.
Shift to a skills-based approach when hiring
In the past year, LinkedIn has seen a 21% increase in job postings advertising skills and responsibilities instead of qualifications and requirements in the U.S., and the number of positions that don’t require a degree increased by nearly 40% in 2020 compared to 2019. Companies are starting to be more intentional about hiring for a candidate’s future potential rather than work history. But it’ll be a long road. Our traditional recruiting processes still place an emphasis on certain types of education and experience.
Start by rethinking your job descriptions. Focus on the results you’d like to see, rather than the type of qualifications that you think could deliver them. Highlighting the desired skills gets to the same results without creating an unnecessary barrier to entry, such as an academic requirement. You’ll also need a skills-based way to assess candidates and find your finalists. If you’re looking beyond education and experience, what should you evaluate?
From hard-skill evaluations (such as coding tests) to innovative soft-skill assessments to “job auditions,” there are plenty of ways to gauge a candidate’s ability to perform without relying on education or experience as proxies. Even asking unexpected interview questions can let you see how a candidate processes information and solves problems in real time.
The payoff? A wider, more diverse talent pool and perhaps stronger retention: Employees without a traditional four-year degree stay at companies 34% longer than those with such a degree, according to LinkedIn data. While this could be a sign that it’s more difficult for them to find their next job, it could also be a sign that they’re simply more engaged and feel like the company is betting on their success. As LinkedIn’s 2018 Workplace Learning Report showed, 94% of employees said they would stay at a company longer if it invested in their career.
By taking a skills-based approach to the hiring process, diplomas and titles can sit alongside assessments, certifications, endorsements and other alternate methods for determining the capability and fit of a candidate. What’s more, by focusing on skills employers can increase the size of their talent pools and pinpoint quality applicants for hard-to-fill roles. Once you’ve hired them, keep your employees engaged and your company ready to adapt to changing demands by creating a culture of learning. It’s how we’ll start hiring and developing talent for the future rather than the past.
Ryan Roslansky is the CEO of LinkedIn.