Eric Friedman is the Founder and CEO of eSkill, a global leader in skills testing and behavioral assessment solutions for employers.
getty
The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the future of work. In the blink of an eye, it proved that a remote infrastructure was viable on a massive scale as office buildings around the world went dark and employees were forced to work from home. Capitalizing on this seismic shift is a top priority for business leaders this year. For talent acquisition professionals, this means developing effective remote workforce hiring strategies.
Streamline Remote Hiring Capabilities
In 2020, talent acquisition professionals rapidly shifted to online platforms to hire job candidates remotely. But with 74% of organizations planning to make remote work permanent, according to some estimates, human resources (HR) leaders need to shore up remote hiring capabilities. The challenge is selecting and consolidating the right tools to deliver a sustainable and effective remote talent acquisition model.
While the HR technology market was a slow-moving corporate tech space just a decade ago, it is now an estimated $250 billion market filled with cloud solutions that are designed to meet the needs of today’s distributed workforce. With limitless options, talent acquisition leaders should focus on what matters most: platforms that improve hiring efficiencies and seamlessly integrate with existing HR solutions.
Work with IT leaders and outsource when necessary to select and integrate digital tools that provide your organization with a complete, end-to-end set of capabilities to source, recruit, assess, interview and onboard candidates remotely. Carefully select cloud-based hiring tools with advanced automation features to create streamlined and efficient processes. Couple these digital solutions with an analytics tool to continuously monitor, analyze and improve your talent management strategies.
Execute A Skills-Based Hiring Approach
By 2018, industry giants IBM, Bank of America, Google and Apple dropped degree requirements from most of their job postings as part of a shift to skills-based hiring. Recently, the nation’s largest employer, the federal government, followed suit. A June 2020 executive order limited the use of education requirements for federal job opportunities, citing a weak connection between a person's formal education and the necessary skills for many jobs. While it's unclear if the Biden administration will enforce the order, it's a clear sign that the tides are changing in favor of skills over degrees.
With job skills becoming obsolete at an increasing rate, it is not surprising that degrees no longer hold the weight they once did. The half-life of job skills is five years or less, according to Deloitte. Consequently, the skills someone acquires while earning a college degree become half as valuable just five years later.
The shortened shelf life of job skills is not only fueling a trend toward skills-based hiring methods, but it is also widening existing skills gaps. Even before Covid-19, skills gaps were a primary concern of business leaders, and now, as the pandemic accelerates digital transformation, organizations are scrambling to secure talent with the skills to keep pace.
Deloitte’s "2020 Global Human Capital Trends" report revealed that 53% of business leaders believe “between half and all of their workforce will need to change their skills and capabilities in the next three years.” Not surprisingly, in its "2021 HR Priorities Survey," Gartner discovered that the top priority of the year for the majority of HR leaders is "building critical skills and competencies" within their organizations.
To fill immediate skill shortages and develop sustainable talent strategies that support long-term competitiveness, organizations should use a pre-employment skills testing platform to move toward a skills-based hiring approach.
Capture Insights That Facilitate Innovation
The way we approach talent acquisition is changing faster than ever. In this age of accelerated innovation and business agility, HR leaders must view every talent management practice as an opportunity to innovate. The shift to remote hiring and the rapid adoption of new tools that came with it created an opportunity for HR leaders to introduce workforce analytics technology.
When organizations use analytics technology to analyze multiple data sets across many systems, including pre-employment testing platforms, learning management systems and applicant tracking systems, they can:
• Hire talent with the skill sets needed most
• Identify existing skills gaps within the workforce
• Analyze evolving patterns and look for possibilities to predict future skill needs
• Uncover skill adjacencies to match employees with training designed to meet skill needs
• Mobilize and redeploy internal talent effectively
From how we assess remote candidates to the way we deploy our existing talent, adopting an analytics-driven approach to workforce planning lays the groundwork to survive today’s volatile business landscape.
At the onset of the pandemic, business leaders did not have time to assess and map employees’ skills so they could identify critical hiring needs and execute strategic talent redeployment. The abrupt disruption to business-as-usual upended standard talent management processes and has allowed HR leaders to begin adopting well-integrated, analytics-driven HR tech stacks. Now, the challenge is to sustain this momentum and uncover new ways to leverage talent acquisition technology, even as disruption continues to reset the path forward.
Forbes Human Resources Council is an invitation-only organization for HR executives across all industries. Do I qualify?
