As the workforce evolves, the future of recruiting is going to be shaped by a skills-first approach. And whether you are searching for a job or searching for new team members, you'll likely experience the affects of it.
What it means is that there will be a shift toward people being hired on the skills they possess and can show, rather than the titles they’ve had in the past.
In particular, LinkedIn predicts that by 2025 skill sets for jobs are going to have drastically changed, making it more and more important for people to remain open to learning new skills and maintaining a continuous learning approach.
As then said by LinkedIn’s CEO, “Even if you aren’t changing your job, your job is most likely changing on you”.
With listed skills becoming the main attraction for hiring managers and recruiters, it is important for people to ensure they’re focusing on being adaptable while continually looking to upskill at the same rate their job is changing. As recruiting processes shift to having skills for the role being front of mind instead of job titles, there will be a large increase in the size of hiring pools.
As hiring pools expand, people who may often be overlooked (eg. a person without a degree) will likely be considered more seriously instead of being immediately ruled out.
Yep, we can now hear all of you who didn’t go to uni jumping up and down for joy now.
But with this shift to skills-first recruitment, there are a few things both candidates and clients can do to respond appropriately.
And because it’s not quite 2025, this shift hasn’t fully come into effect yet but we’re on the way. This means that some companies and recruitment agencies are hiring with a skills-first approach, but not every single place may have made the transition, making your job title still a relevant indicator of your experience for a lot of hiring managers.
So, what should you be doing?
For jobseekers
If you’re ready to join the job hunt again, the most beneficial thing you can do as a candidate is a highlight and make your skills stand out.
There are a few ways you can do this:
For example, if you work within the engineering industry, your skills section could look like this:
Technical Skills – Software:
Technical Skills – Coding:
The link below walks you through how to add skills to your profile, but you should do this to help others (and recruiters) understand your strengths, which will likely help you become more visible to recruiters and hiring managers.
https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a549047/add-and-remove-skills-on-your-profile?lang=en
With the shift to recruiters searching for candidates based on the skills they have instead of a job title, by adding skills to your profile, you’re helping your profile become more easily found. Particularly if you don’t have a degree or formal qualifications, this will help you gain an advantage in the job search.
For clients
By hiring on skills instead of job titles, you are allowing for the pool you’re hiring from to increase 10 times over. Yep, 10 times. That’s a lot.
Advising your hiring team to be searching for “someone with experience with MYOB” instead of the word “accountant”, is going to benefit you in the long run.
So, prior to job briefs, think about what skills your ideal candidate may demonstrate and then highlight them in your meeting.
This is also important because different companies have different titles for roles. For example, in one organisation a recruiter may be called a Recruitment Consultant whereas in another they are a Talent Acquisition Advisor. And yet they have the same skills.
With the workforce ever-changing and recruitment responding accordingly, recruitment agencies have to be on top of trends like this. To get ahead of the pack, Eight has already responded to this shift of ‘Skills first recruitment’.
If you're curious about this, why it works and how we can help with your recruitment needs, call Nadene on 0432 124 418 or email nadene@eightrecruitment.com.au.