….particularly if you are a small to medium sized employer competing with the “Bigs”!

So how does hiring for talent look different than hiring for specific skills or experience?

Hiring for talent is very similar to hiring for “fit” in that you’re looking for candidates who have the innate ability, interest and motivation to do a certain type of work – they are the “right fit” for the work that needs to be done.   But the focus on talent means you are willing to help a candidate with the right “talent” acquire the specific skills they need after they’re hired.  Your hope is that the employee you hire will not only learn how to do the job quickly but will apply what they’ve  learned smartly.  IOW, they have natural talent to do the work well.  They are the right “fit” for the job!

Hiring standards focused only on the candidate’s skills and experience is a lot easier, but the goals are different.   You’re looking for  candidates who already have the knowledge and skills to do the job.  Hiring for talent is definitely a whole lot more challenging, as you are looking for someone who hasn’t necessarily had experience doing the same work, or even may be lacking some of the skills.  You’re hiring bad on their aptitude to do this job well down the road.

When you hire for skills and experience, you are assuming the employee will contribute quickly with little to no on the job training.  When you hire for talent you assume the employee will be a proven performer once they’ve been taught the job and/or acquire the skills.

The phrase “hire for potential, train for skills” has been around for a long time….

…but its particularly relevant for small to medium sized companies who often find themselves competing for a shrinking number of already skilled/experienced job candidates.

What are the payoffs for finding and hiring for “fit” in today’s marketplace?

You change the competitive landscape.   

When a hiring manager starts their  search for the “right candidate” there’s always that euphoric time when you get to make your wish list – all the skills, experiences and talents you’d like to see in your  “ideal candidate”.   Unfortunately, you often find that there are fewer candidates who fit that  “ideal” profile,  but all the ‘BIGS”  are fighting for their attention.

By focusing on a candidate’s potential rather than their here and now skills, you’re changing who you compete with for what candidates. Rather than competing with larger companies with deep pockets for pay and benefits,   you’re now focusing on a very different pool of candidates that your competitors are likely to overlook.

In today’s marketplace, the race to hire the candidate with the exact experience and skills you need may not be winnable , even for the best recruiters.  The race for “talent” is.    

You can hire faster.  

Looking for the “ideal” candidate takes a lot of time.  There are likely to be lots of starts and stops; interviews cancelled;  offers not accepted.

 And make no mistake – taking too long to hire for an open role can be costly to your business.  It puts pressure on the rest of your team, it creates gaps in how your team executes.   And when those gaps impact your company’s customers,  it can impact revenues.

A decision to hire candidates with potential rather than a candidate with here and now skills allows you to move faster.  Not only are there more candidates to choose from,  but the candidates themselves are more open to your reach outs.  Many are just like you  in that they’ve been overlooked by employers looking for the “ideal” and will appreciate an employer willing to “give them a chance”.

That employer is you.

A high potential, less experienced candidate, often costs less. 

These are candidates who know they’re not a finished product but are willing to be paid less  just to get their foot in the door. Unlike a highly experienced candidate, they are joining your team for a learning opportunity,  not a pay increase.

Many small to medium sized companies are already committed to developing their employees from within so that they can train them “their way”.  For these companies, targeting candidates who are willing to work less in exchange for the  training and mentorship you are already offering,  simply makes business sense.

You avoid the risks of hiring an expensive, highly seasoned employee, who isn’t the “right fit”.  

One of the downsides of hiring a seasoned candidate is that you are not just hiring their skills and experience but you are also hiring their mindset and attitudes about how the work should be done.  If their  way of doing the job, being part of a team, communicating with others, doesn’t fit with your approach or culture their previous experience may end up creating more problems than it solves.

High talent, low experience employees, on the other hand are typically moldable…easily trained to do things your way.

Your new hires will energize your team!     

Hiring for potential can fill your team with employees hungry to prove themselves.  They’re eager to learn, eager to prove  to you and the team that they can do the job.  And their eyes are fresh, able to offer up new ways of looking at and solving problems that a more experienced employee can’t.

One of the first things you’ll find when hiring high potential employees is that your team becomes energized to help their  new team member succeed.  They are no threat.  Additionally, when you give a seasoned employee the opportunity to “train” you build the skills and confidence of the entire team.

Your team becomes more diverse – a good thing!  

High potential candidates typically come in a wide range of profiles, without a typical age, gender or experience profile that can often dominate a team who has a pattern of hiring the same type of (experienced) candidates over and over.  Diversity will make your team stronger – more creative, more innovative, more agile.

Your team is likely to have less turnover, longer retention.

An employee hired with the promise that they will be developed,  is an employee likely to reciprocate that commitment with their personal loyalty.  In today’s job market the tendency to change jobs every 1-2 years is commonplace, creating enormous costs to US businesses.  An employee who has personally benefited from 1-2 years of mentorship is going to think twice before leaving you for another opportunity where there is a chance that mentorship won’t continue.

The value of a loyalty factor created by hiring for potential, can be immeasurable.

If you think you’re ready for a hiring strategy focused on talent, here’s a few ideas about how to get started with your next hire:

Decide ahead of time HOW MUCH EXPERIENCE, and WHAT TALENTS are most critical to hiring success. 

Yes there are activities and responsibilities embedded in most jobs that require a specific set of skills or work experiences simply to make sure the candidates you are reviewing “can do” the job.

• If a role requires leadership, for example, you can’t put someone into that who has never lead others – even if they have been an exceptional individual contributor elsewhere.  People who have been individual contributors and people who have lead others, have developed very different skill sets.
• If a position requires specialized knowledge, for example, how to process an insurance claim, you have to staff that role with someone with that particular type of knowledge or experience.

When it comes down to many of the important components of job placement, there are certain types of knowledge or skills  that are better taught in the context of your specific work environment.  If a candidate for a claims processor role comes with a good knowledge about how claims are handled inside most insurance companies, they can quickly be taught how claims get submitted to most insurance companies by your office. They don’t need 5 years of experience submitting claims to do well.

Skip (or minimize) the “number of years experience” requirement whenever possible. 

One of the first things I learned as a recruiter is the difference between work experience and transferable expertise.   We’ve all seen those employees who can work five years in a particular role,  but with respect to the talent they can bring to a future job, they only have one year of experience – repeated five times.  Other employees can find 5 years of work experience in one or two years.  How candidates benefit from years of work experience varies – in many cases the direct result of their “natural” talent.

Bottomline – experience and talent are very different dimensions of what each candidate brings to the table.  Instead of setting a minimum number of years a candidate MUST HAVE to be considered for the job, in many cases screening out high talent employees, we recommend you start with a description of the exact type and level of work and decision making the job entails, and then identify those candidates who have the ability to be trained quickly and easily to perform that work.

Don’t get hung up on the resume.

Some hiring managers are resume snobs – overly impressed with candidates who have the right things on their resumes – the “right” schools, the right employers, the right job titles – forgetting that is the person not the resume who eventually has to do the work.

Don’t get me wrong – resumes are needed and in most cases helpful, but they don’t replace the need for a behavioral interview where the interviewer uncovers what the candidate has actually done in their previous jobs and make an assessment of their potential to do more.

An employee who has developed a successful sales team selling small ticket consumer products at IBM, may not have the skills needed to develop a sales team for a small start up company, selling a service with a long sales cycle.  Don’t get confused by “experience” – you have to know “experience doing what”.  Sometimes experience acquired elsewhere is transferable to your environment.  Often it is not.

Deliver the training needed – for both your high potential and highly experienced new hires.

Before you implement a hiring program focused on potential, make sure you have a training or mentoring program in place that aligns with your hiring promise.  Managers who hire for potential but don’t have the training or mentoring resources to develop that potential have wasted their time.

We hear stories all the time about companies who throw their high potential employees into jobs they know nothing about and let them “sink or swim”.  For the employees who “make it”, there is always that thrill of survival, but rarely do these employees believe they have performed meaningful work or contributed to the employer in a meaningful way.  Many will tell you they simply found a way to fly under the radar before they left for another, more meaningful job.

Small to medium sized companies have a special advantage when it comes to attracting candidates who want to do meaningful work.  Hiring for talent helps them lean into that strength.

In summary, hiring the best candidate for any job always comes down to identifying those few qualities a new hire must bring to the table in order to be a successful contributor in both the long and short term.

While talent and experience should go hand in hand, it is clear that emphasizing one or the other in the hiring process can deliver very different results – particularly for small to medium sized companies.  While previous work experience can provide an immediate solution to an immediate problem, that experience isn’t always available for the price you can afford in the current job market.

Hiring for talent, on the other hand, is a strategy that exchanges some short term gains, but may create a competitive advantage  long term.

Need help making your list of the talents, skills and experiences you need to find in the “right candidate”?   Give us a call at 425-637-3312 or e mail us at partnerservices@pacestaffing.com and we’d be glad to help you put together the right recruiting profile.  

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PACE Staffing Network is one of the Puget Sound’s premier staffing /recruiting agencies and has been helping Northwest  employers find and hire the right employees for over 40 years.

A  3 time winner of the coveted “Best in Staffing” designation , PACE is ranked in the top 2% of staffing agencies nationwide based on annual surveys of customer satisfaction.

PACE services include temporary and contract staffing, temp to hire auditions, direct hire professional recruiting services, Employer of Record (payroll) services, and a large menu of candidate evaluation and reference check services our clients can purchase a la carte.

To learn more about how partnering with PACE will make a difference to how you find and hire employees,  contact us at 425-637-3312 or e mail our Partner Solutions  team  at partnerservices@pacestaffing.com.