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The evolving workforce dilemma to occupy hard-to-fill roles and unemployment due to COVID-19 raised a skills-focused approach to hire as a solution.
In this tight hiring market, finding talent is now coupled with reliance on skills — especially those that are verifiable. Today, the pandemic has further accelerated the trend of skills-based hiring.
For years, hiring has traditionally been heavily focused on higher education requirements and past experiences.
These 2 factors influence hirers that applicants who possess them are a good match for a job while skills are less of a priority for one to be considered for the role.
According to a 2019 survey by Linkedin, more than 50% of professionals feel their skills were overlooked and 24% struggle to get a callback for interviews despite having the required skills.
This traditional hiring practice has caused employers to forsake valuable skills for qualifications.
Hiring based on education requirements only widens the opportunity gap for career upward mobility and employers miss out on job seekers who have the expertise they may need more.
Furthermore, the pandemic is proving that skills are growing important in entering and succeeding in this new economy.
To recover from the pandemic, it will be crucial for businesses to hire based on skills. With high demand and a lack of workers to fill job roles, the skills gap continues to exist.
By switching to skills-based hiring, companies are able to hire from a diverse workforce and through training opportunities, they would be able to adapt easily and narrow the opportunity gap.
According to the Linkedin survey, 77% of hirers are focusing efforts on hiring based on skills and competencies, showing a hiring trend in skills rather than education.
Due to the disruption caused by the pandemic, skills — technical and transferable — are becoming more valuable across sectors and durable over time.
This makes it attractive for companies who are in dire need to fill roles urgently.
To support this future of work, Singapore initiated a new programme called Skills Path, supported by the National Jobs Council and piloted by Linkedin.
The initiative provides job seekers opportunities based on their proven skills, allowing companies to discover potential employees amid the pandemic and fill new roles.
For job seekers, this helps level the playing field of applicants based on skills while hirers would have greater access to a more diverse talent pool.
By removing the unnecessary barrier to job roles that are educational qualifications, it could help nurture a culture of learning to be ever-ready for changes.
However, companies should not completely abandon education qualifications as an indicator during hiring. Instead, there should be a right balance between the two.
Having a wide and diverse talent pool gives hirers the possible options to determine the capability and fit of a potential employee in greater depth.
Needless to say, the workforce is evolving and a shift towards skills-based hiring is the future of hiring.
Adapting to this change seems inevitable if companies want to keep their competitive edge.
An important element in the shift is the word “verifiable”.
When businesses plan to commit to hiring based on skills, it makes sense to ensure that potential employees actually have those skills.
This is where having a digital platform to help validate those skills becomes useful.
The switch to skills-based hiring sounds taxing because it requires time to dissect job roles into the skills essential for the job and the implementation into your hiring process.
So, digital outsourcing platforms like Outside could help to get companies started on verifying skills to make this vetting process easy with minimal effort from businesses.
Outside is Singapore’s leading community micro-job platform that creates micro (l)earning opportunities for students, homemakers and seniors.
As a two-sided platform, Outside provides an all-in-one outsourcing management platform for businesses, assisting in breaking down jobs into smaller simpler pieces and improving operations efficiency. For job seekers, Outside provides flexible job opportunities that users can easily pick up and complete within the Outside app, allowing them to work conveniently and earn reliably.
Visit https://www.outsideapp.co or download our app on Apple Store and Google Play to find out more!
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