Unlocking Talent: How Skills-Based Recruiting Transforms Hiring

Skills-based hiring is on the rise. In fact, according to McKinsey, hiring for skills is five times more predictive of job performance than hiring for education.

But, implementing skills-based recruiting across your organization can be a challenge for a number of reasons. This is why, during our September webinar, we were excited to have a discussion with three talent leaders, each with extensive experience across various enterprise organizations, to explore how skills-based recruiting transforms hiring.

We were joined by David Landman, Former Global Head of Talent Development at Goldman Sachs; Elin Thomasian, Head of Workforce Strategy & Consulting at TalentNeuron; and Elizabeth Tyndell, Head of Talent Acquisition at New York Life.
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Check out the full 1-hour webinar below or read on for a brief synopsis of the 3 major areas we dug into. 

1.) The Significance of Skills-Based Hiring

We kicked things off with a bit of an intro on what skills-based hiring means to our panelists. David mentioned that the first reason it’s so important is really because of talent attraction and retention. Candidates want growth more than anything else, and a company that focuses on skills-based hiring alerts candidates that the organization cares about developing their skills.

Both Elizabeth & Elin added that future proofing your organization to what skills are emerging and what skills are going to become obsolete is imperative. The world is moving so quickly, so companies can no longer rely on their traditional job descriptions and have to get really creative in thinking about what skills they need to hire for and what skills they need to develop.

One of the biggest questions teams have in regards to skills-based recruiting is how to even get started. Elin recommends starting with a pilot, developing that strategy, and expanding it as it’s catching on. A lot of organizations will start with reimagining their interview strategy or thinking about using a skills-based CRM tool. 

2.) Strategies For Adopting Skills-Based Hiring

When shifting to a skills-based hiring approach, Elizabeth walked through 4 steps an organization should take: 

1.) Have an honest conversation on what your scale is - are you overhauling the entire enterprise or just starting with a specific area
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2.) Talk to peers - we’re all in this together, so learn from and collaborate with others
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3.) Decide if you’re going to bring in technology to aid in your process (& when)
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4.) Get an internal sponsor - someone who’s going to talk to the organization about why skills-based hiring works 

The panelists also touched on the most common mistakes companies make when moving to skills-based hiring, and number one is change management. Focus on a problem statement and bring all the players along on the journey. When you do this, the rest comes so much easier because you’ve spread ownership across the organization.   

3.) Leveraging Technology & Structured Interviewing

Creating a consistent interview process for every candidate ties really well into skills-based hiring as structured interviews are highly reliable for predicting job success. Many teams do have a structured interview process, but they simply don’t have the technology to aid their efforts.

When it comes to technology, remember that great technology is not a strategy, it’s an enabler. Journey mapping is also important here - what is the driver of the strategy, who are all the personas that will be using the technology, and what’s the data set you’re trying to capture that’s going to tell you if the technology is successful. 

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To conclude, each panelist shared their single piece of advice they’d give to any organization that’s starting this journey to skills-based hiring. They all agreed that the most important things to focus on are to bring people along on the journey, listen to what’s happening in the market to ensure you’re fact checking your strategy, and start small, learn from there, and iterate. 

And with that, we wrapped things up!

Huge thanks to David, Elin, & Elizabeth for joining us! Don't forget to check out the entire webinar linked above for even more great insights.

And see you on October 16th for our next webinar! We’ll be joined by Fran Benjamin, Kalifa Oliver, & John Graham Jr. who will be talking about how they expect corporate DEI to change in 2025. You can register for this live conversation here. 

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