The Hidden Danger of Skills-based Hiring

 I always start a new search project with the hiring manager with this question,

"What does the person in this role need to do to be successful over the course of the first year?"

This always produces 5-6 key action-oriented performance objectives like, "Build and lead a logistics team to develop a fast-reaction procurement system to handle rapidly changing international tariffs."

Then I ask, "What are the 'must have' critical skills that you won't comprise on?" This always results in 2-3 important competencies like strong communication skills or some exotic technical need.

But it's what I ask next that's the most important part of the intake meeting:

How will a person actually use (that critical skill) on the job?

In one search a hiring manager wanted an MS in Electrical Engineering for a VP Marketing role. What he actually wanted was someone to lead the development of a very complex three-year product roadmap in a rapidly changing technical environment. The person we placed was very technical but didn't have an EE degree.

In other situation the VP Finance wanted to hire a controller with a CPA and super heavy SEC reporting skills. What he actually wanted was someone who could project manage the SEC reporting function. The person we placed was no SEC expert, but she was great at managing the complexities and pressures involved in the financial reporting for a publicly-traded company.

Despite the value of converting a skill into a measurable outcome, getting the hiring manager to answer these questions was challenging. This is no longer the case with AI. We now just embed the answer into the question. For example, "For this data analyst role if seems like you'd want someone who could convert our massive product sales information into real time product line profitability analysis. Is this correct?"

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The shift to skills-based hiring is undeniably positive. But let's be clear: it's just one step in a multi-step process. You need to be sure the skills selected are the correct ones, that they’re being evaluated properly and you can attract qualified people who are both competent AND motivated to use these skills once hired.

Unless these pieces are fully integrated all you’ll be doing is seeing more people responding to your job postings. That's not progress – that's just more noise.

And hiring competent but unmotivated people is worse than noise. It’s a bad hire.

TestGorilla is leading the way on solving some of these problems and they asked me what else could be done and to share my perspective at an upcoming event.

I simply said that it's what people DO with what they HAVE that matters, not what they HAVE, and that's why you to start every search project with this one question:

"What does this person need to do to be successful in this role?"

It turns out that every job in the world can be defined by 6-8 performance objectives that describe the actual work that needs to be done. This then leads to the next question about what are the critical skills needed to do this work. Here they are for the data analyst role.

Attracting In vs. Weeding Out Is the Real Super Skill

But here's what often gets missed: attracting people who can do this work is actually more important than verifying whether they're competent.

The best assessment tools in the world won't help if the right candidates never apply. Just as bad, is hiring people who are competent to do the work, but not motivated to do it.

However these is a solution to this dilemma. I call it “Job Branding.” To see its power just add this type of phrase in your emails or and job postings:

Use your [super skill] to accomplish [something really big and significant].

Instead of listing "15 years international procurement experience required," try:

"Your insight into worldwide distribution will help us navigate a world of changing tariffs."

For senior-staff and management roles, this approach will outperform any employer branding initiative because it speaks directly to the person’s intrinsic motivators.

The Bottom Line

Skills matter. Of course they do. But it's how someone uses those critical skills that determines success – not the skills themselves.

That's the future of skills-based hiring: attracting and hiring outstanding people who are both competent AND motivated to do the real work that needs to get done.

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Using AI you can now convert any job into a career move and identify the critical skills in two minutes.