You Need a Skills-Based Approach to Hiring and Developing Talent

You Need a Skills-Based Approach to Hiring and Developing Talent

With the global economy experiencing massive change, upskilling and reskilling have taken on a renewed sense of urgency. Success through these transitions requires major shifts in thinking about how hiring and employee development are done.

The economic toll of the Covid-19 pandemic is expected to leave more than 140 million people out of work and another 1.6 billion at risk of income loss. Unfortunately, many of the jobs lost simply won't return. At the same time, certain companies and industries like logistics and manufacturing can't hire fast enough. Shifting to a skills-focused approach is a viable solution to an evolving workforce dilemma.

Workers often don't realize that the skills they have for one job can be easily transferred to another — nor do employers. Take food servers who lost their jobs due to the pandemic. More than 70% of them have the skills needed to succeed in customer service, which is currently one of the most in-demand jobs on LinkedIn. Had servers and people hiring for customer service specialists known they already had many of the required skills, we may have seen a significant shift of out-of-work food servers into in-demand roles instead of seeing those positions go unfilled.