How the Skills Revolution Is Transforming Business

By Dina Bayasanova, PhD., Co-Founder & CEO, PitchMe

It’s widely accepted that companies today are undergoing some of the biggest business transformations ever in recent times. In addition to the digital transformation that was already in play, in just this past year the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated existing changes, transforming businesses at scale.

The business transformation brought about in the past year has changed every aspect of the workplace. From where we work (remote locations), how we perform our work (collaboratively, using enterprise software, across time zones) and, perhaps most importantly, the skills needed to perform and remain competitive in today’s economy, have all changed and continue to shift.

It is a fact that upskilling and re-skilling will be vital in the post-Covid economy. According to the World Economic Forum, by 2022, 54% of all employees will require re-skilling and upskilling significantly.

Employers must be prepared for this future by taking a closer look at the entire hiring process from a strategic perspective. They can do so by updating processes and mindsets around hiring. That means looking beyond identifying factors such as race, gender, and age to build a more diverse, multinational and multigenerational workforce. Doing so will allow employers to improve long term success when it comes to hiring the right people and increasing value for business.

The Future of Work is skills-based

In the post-Covid economy, skills will take on an even greater importance. Given the amount of change underway, it’s crucial for companies to evaluate candidates across a broad range of both hard and soft skills, including transferable skills across industries. There is more movement and dynamism in the job market today than ever before, and in order to hire the best candidates, it is important for employers to take a more holistic approach to hiring.

This means evolving our understanding of career shifters. In the past, career shifting was often viewed as a negative, even an indicator of failure. Today, this has changed and career shifting has actually become an indicator of success; it demonstrates a capacity to apply knowledge in new spheres, adaptability, and diversity of experience.

By employing career shifters, the focus is on the skill, rather than the employment history. Furthermore, the integration of a career shifter alongside entry-level candidates is essential for the success of any company because it creates a diverse environment, where many different skills are brought to the table. Diversity of hiring begets diversity of skills, which helps future-proof a company —  a prime driver of why the Future of Work is poised to become skill-based.

Diversity as a pathway to skils

One way in which companies can start taking a broader-minded approach towards skills-based hiring is to recognise that a diverse workforce is able to offer a broader range of skills. Companies shouldn’t look only at hard skills; a candidate’s soft skills can be invaluable to an organisation.

By implementing diversity and inclusion initiatives, companies can harness a wider talent pool and broaders skill set than hiring within a monoculture of, say, only recent graduates from a specific university.

When hiring across demographics, diversity and inclusion become a company’s untapped potential. In fact, according to the World Economic Forum, between 2007-2009 while the S&P declined by 35.5%, companies who employed diversity amongst race, gender, sexual orientation and age within their hiring practices posted a 14.4% gain. Clearly, there’s a lot to be gained from making hiring more diverse —  but how can companies effectively do so? By hiring smarter —  and here’s how.

Smarter hiring practices

In addition to the changes taking place in workplaces around the world, the very nature of hiring itself has also changed drastically in the past year. Where at one time, hiring was a lengthy, laborious process conducted in-person, today, sophisticated AI-powered technology is able to help hiring managers make smarter and more efficient hiring decisions, virtually.

Having long been the stalwart of hiring, in 2021, the CV is on its way out. As companies look to bring diversity into the hiring process, it is clear that CVs offer only a two-dimensional approach to hiring that bring with it many pitfalls.

Not only does the CV fail to provide a thorough picture of the candidate, but it also is subject to unconscious bias, which means that companies who only rely on CV-led hiring will fail to tap into the full talent pool.

Fortunately, new HR technologies that remove bias and rely on data to present a deeper, more intelligent look into each candidate are on the rise. Such technologies are beneficial not just because they are efficient, however.

They are also beneficial because they help provide better insights into a candidate’s skills, a more well-rounded macro view of the candidate. Most importantly, they are also beneficial because, by anonymising the initial hiring process, they help to remove unconscious biases that existed when the CV was the beginning and endpoint of hiring.

Spurred into mass adoption by the pandemic (which required virtual, digital hiring solutions) these smarter, data-driven hiring solutions are now here to stay. As we move forward into the “new normal”, the future of work requires a new approach to how companies hire, retain and upskill employees. For starters, yesterday’s hiring practices simply cannot keep pace with the changing nature of work.

Closing the skills gap with a multinational, multigenerational workforce

As mentioned, technology helps with broadening the skills companies look at when hiring, but what about future proofing against unknown-as-yet skills gaps? Again, diversity comes into play here because the aim is not only to hire those who have a diverse range of skills, but those who possess transferable skills that can fortify the workplace for whatever comes next.

One way of doing so is by considering the business case for maintaining both a multinational and multigenerational workforce. As the human lifespan increases, so people are opting to stay in the workforce longer than ever before. According to the OECD, age inclusion is an untapped source for growth: resilience, productivity, market potential, and innovation are all attributes that emerge from a multigenerational workforce, and these attributes are important to the current global economy.

Likewise, a multinational workforce brings different global and cultural perspectives and talents to the table, which are an asset to innovative companies looking to think differently in order to solve complex problems.

Therefore, the skills revolution also reinforces the fact that companies need a new, unbiased way to evaluate candidates, since the most experienced talent pool relies on candidates who offer different perspectives and are able to transfer their professional expertise across sectors. This is why, in the coming decade, leading companies will rely on both multinational and multigenerational integration to build successful teams.

In order to prepare for this shift, and avoid losing the best candidates, companies should continue to adapt their hiring practices related to candidate screening, making sure that the systems implemented to do so are agnostic towards identifying factors including race, gender, nationality and age. Rather, looking at the candidate as a whole —  inclusive of their hard and soft skills —  is far more valuable to the hiring process.

A rapidly changing global economy

While we continue to navigate uncharted waters this year and beyond, one thing is for certain: employers must make every effort to stay competitive by hiring the best candidates using a skills-based approach.

Again, this is where technology that can highlight transferable skills while anonymising factors such as age, race, and gender is helpful. It will ensure that hiring is not only fair but that skills and experience are the driving factors. This way, companies won’t miss out on the best candidates simply due to unconscious bias.

Ultimately, we are seeing our perceptions around what it means to be competitive and upskilling are shifting. Shouldn’t our hiring practices follow suit? In 2021, let’s ditch bias and make hiring smarter.