5 Ways Skills-Based Hiring Can Transform Your Recruitment

5 Ways Skills-Based Hiring Can Transform Your Recruitment

In today’s competitive job market, traditional hiring methods often struggle to keep pace with the evolving needs of the life science industry. Faced with an ever-increasing talent shortage, now is the time to explore new approaches to talent acquisition that will help to expand your talent pool, streamline your recruitment process, and improve employee engagement and retention.

Skills-based hiring presents a transformative solution to this. In this article, we explore exactly what skills-based hiring entails, and how this hiring strategy can empower you to overcome the talent shortage and build high-performing teams.

What is Skills-Based Hiring?

With skills-based hiring, candidates are evaluated based on their competencies rather than solely on their educational background or job experience. This allows them to be assessed based on their ability to perform specific job-related tasks and contribute to the organisation’s objectives, shifting the focus from what they’ve achieved in the past to what they are capable of now, and the results they could produce in your organisation.

According to TestGorilla’s The State of Skills-Based Hiring 2022 report, approximately 76% of employers today use skills-based hiring to identify top talent. This approach to recruitment is gaining momentum in the life science industry where companies are facing more obstacles than ever when it comes to hiring talent with the skills needed to adapt to rapidly evolving technologies, products, and services.

What are the Main Benefits of Skills-Based Hiring?

Find Candidates Who Can Fulfil Your Job Requirements

One of the primary advantages of skills-based hiring is its ability to accurately assess the key skills and competencies required for a particular role, allowing you to improve the quality of your hires. By clearly defining the essential skills and competencies necessary for success, you can attract candidates who possess the necessary expertise even if they don’t hold the highest qualifications or have the most work experience listed on their CV.

Not only will this considerably widen your talent pool, but it can also improve employee satisfaction. TestGorilla’s research found that 72% of employees who were recruited via skills-based hiring were either happy or very happy in their current roles, compared to 62.9% who were not recruited via skills-based hiring. This indicates an increase in employee satisfaction when workers are placed in roles that match their skill sets, which can also boost morale, productivity, and retention rates.

Identify and Utilise Transferrable Skills

Skills-based hiring recognises that many skills acquired in non-industry-specific roles, education, or even personal experiences can be easily transferred to roles in the life science industry. For example, instead of focusing solely on industry experience, you can focus on identifying transferable skills such as problem-solving, critical thinking, data analysis, and communication. This approach will open you up to candidates from other industries, academia, or even recent graduates entering the industry for the first time.

Reduce Bias and Promote Diversity

Skills-based hiring can also help to reduce inherent biases that may be present when hiring solely based on traditional qualifications or experience. In TestGorillas report, 91% of employers reported an increase in diversity when using skills-based hiring which emphasises skills, competencies and other objective criteria rather than subjective judgements. This opens up your talent pool and creates more opportunities for individuals from underrepresented groups or backgrounds, ultimately enhancing creativity, innovation, and overall organisational performance.

Create Upskilling and Reskilling Opportunities

The talent shortage in the life science industry can also be addressed by investing in upskilling and reskilling your existing workforce, leaning on your internal mobility strategy to become less reliant on external hiring. Through this, you’ll be able to identify individuals who possess a strong foundation of transferable skills along with a willingness to learn, and who have already proven they align with your organisational mission, values, and company culture. If you can’t find the talent with the skills your organisation needs externally, investing in the people who are already committed to your organisation is an effective alternative that benefits both you and your employees.

This will also promote a learning culture within your organisation, where continuous skill development and growth are valued. You can encourage individuals to continuously learn and adapt in an ever-evolving industry, helping you to retain talent and also foster a dynamic and agile workforce capable of tackling emerging challenges.

Enhance the Candidate Experience

54% of candidates prefer the skills-based hiring approach better than traditional methods. Candidates hired via this strategy are also more likely to stay with their employer; with 3.2% of candidates recruited via skills-based hiring considering leaving their roles within the next 12 months, compared to 7.3% of candidates who were not recruited via this method. This suggests that skills-based hiring may have the potential to lower voluntary attrition by as much as 50%, which is indicative of how important it is to match the right candidates with the right roles.

Overcome the Talent Shortage…

Skills-based hiring can prove to be a transformative solution for you to overcome the talent shortage and position your organisation for success in an increasingly competitive landscape. In TestGorilla’s report, skills-based hiring was found to result in:

• A 92% reduction in the number of mis-hires
• A 91.4% reduction in the total time-to-hire
• An 89.8% reduction in the overall cost-to-hire

These findings are representative of just how powerful skills-based hiring can be for optimising your entire recruitment process from start to finish. By assessing candidates based on their skills, you’ll be able to quickly identify those with the potential to produce amazing results for your organisation and focus your resources on engaging these individuals in your hiring process. This will ultimately help to improve your recruitment metrics whilst expanding your talent pool beyond the boundaries of what was previously possible.

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