For Recruitment Success: Don’t Over-Value Hard Skills

Posted by Carolyne Burns | September - 7 - 2016 | 0 Comment

Don't Over-Value Hard Skills - Wrong AttitudeMore and more it seems that companies are doomed to a revolving door of employees. It’s easy to attribute this phenomenon to the millennial generation and their desire for greener pastures every two to five years, but are other forces at work? The answer is yes, and the enemy may be coming from within: out-dated recruitment strategies.

A growing body of research reveals that managers place a higher importance on soft skills such as attitude and work ethic than on hard trade skills. With soft skills, an employee

  1. Is more likely to excel as a leader
  2. Is more likely to be good at problem solving, delegating, and motivating
  3. Can get along with people and facilitate team building
  4. Displays a positive attitude that boosts morale

The problem is that most human resources professionals are still using hard skills based assessments and overlooking the importance of soft skills. The question, then, is how to help HR identify candidates with the perfect combination of attitude and ability.

Is HR Lagging Behind the Technological Times?

“When you’re recruiting, you shouldn’t be blinded by the experience a potential candidate offers. That’s just part of the picture,” I say. “The real question is how can you assess potential and the likelihood that they will grow into a perfect fit for your company.” The answer is predictive hiring technology, but it’s an answer that few HR departments are using.

According to Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends 2014 report, data analytics are used by:

  • 58% of sales organisations
  • 56% of marketing organisations
  • 55% of operations organisations
  • 14% of HR departments

Why Skills Are Not Enough

You can’t build a great company without a great workforce, but who has the right stuff? Recruitment isn’t about finding people with the right experience. It’s about finding people with the right mind-set. To do that, companies need to hire for attitude and train for skill.

Expr3ss! predictive hiring technology goes beyond skills assessment to find a good fit for corporate culture and reduce churn. Unlike human evaluation of candidates, our algorithms

  • Can identify the skills and attributes of top-performing candidates
  • Can screen out candidates with a low probability of fitting a corporate culture
  • Are actionable, fair, and reliable

What Comes Next?

Is your business over-budget due to staffing problems and employee churn? Would an automated approach to finding good hires save you time and money? (Of course it would!) If you’d like to know more, we invite you to contact Expr3ss! to create a future with a stable, engaged workforce, and few headaches in recruitment and retention.