The Covid-19 pandemic created turmoil in the entire world. The employment rate in India fell from 37.56% in March to 36.79% in April, as 7.35 million Indians lost jobs. Many of these lost jobs won’t even return in the future. And certain companies and industries can’t hire quick enough. Upskilling and reskilling have renewed a sense of urgency, and the skills-based approach is a workable solution to a changing workforce problem. But this transition also requires a new way of thinking about how hiring is done and how employees could be developed.

Being able to evaluate employees and new hires based on their skillsets becomes very vital. The degree and experience ratchet has walled off the skilled applicants and has broadened the opportunity gap over the past few decades, and the lack of awareness in the employers that they already have the talent is prominent. Evaluating employees helps diversify the talent pool, and also hiring new employees will significantly increase innovation.

Here’s how combining learning into the company’s culture and taking a skills-focused approach to the hiring process can alter their thinking in a world where talent is one of the most precious assets in business.

Combine learning in the company’s culture

There is a need to upskill the employees’ talents within the organisation as the rapid change in the world increases various other demands at a constant and higher pace. Therefore, organisations need to inculcate and provide further training as it will help the organisation by increasing the company’s revenue. 

Another way to inculcate and use the employees’ skills is by knowing about them and finding out other functional skills they have apart from their job portfolio. Allowing the employees to invest their 10% of work hours on other functional work will increase the company’s potential economically and will benefit the employee to enhance their skills through practising real-time work.

By investing in the employees’ future, the organisation creates hardworking employees as inculcating the method to support their talents leads to a positive impact on the employee as they feel secure about their future due to enhanced talents. As per a recent report by Future Talent, 95% of companies in India offer training and have dedicated learning and development programmes in their organisation.

Shift to a skills-based approach when hiring

Companies will benefit explicitly if they hire and look for candidates with past experiences and degrees and the skills one possesses. Shifting from a traditional way of hiring individuals to recruiting individuals on a skill-based will be a long process to be implemented throughout the organisations. The traditional way of hiring individuals emphasises fields like education and experience. As a result, only 15% of the freshers make up for overall talent demand. While over 40% of candidates with one to five years of experience continue to remain in maximum demand.

Companies should focus on the outcome they desire and search for candidates that can fulfil them without considering their education qualifications. India is a country where 65% have IT skills, 64% have web development, 62% have soft skills and the skills in demand for the future are AI (45%), adaptability (32%), and creativity (31%). Keeping a close eye on the candidate’s ability will help the company to progress beneficially. There is no guarantee that a 4-year degree course candidate would be better than a non-degree holder, a skill-based individual.

It is essential for organisations to test the candidates thoroughly when skill-based hiring is concerned. This can be done by assessing them in hard and soft skills and by finding out their performance ability without giving more importance to experiences and degrees. 

It is observed that the employees without a degree stay in an organisation longer than a degree holder; this is not because of the difficulty in finding other jobs but mainly because of their engagement and their hardworking nature for the upcoming success of the organisation.

So, by considering a skill-based approach to hiring employees and considering ways such as certificates, assessments and other alternative ways to determine an applicant’s capabilities can be used. In addition, with the global economy experiencing a massive change, the pandemic helped break some custom ways of doing things and accelerated other trends. Focusing on skills would allow companies to increase the size of their talent pools by keeping them engaged and the company ready to adapt to changing demands and develop talent for the future.