Shortages have become something of a way of life recently. Whether it’s nurses or fuel, we’ve all felt the pinch. But from an economic perspective, this pain is nothing compared to a shortage that’s staring us in the face, but not getting anything like the required media attention – workforce skills.

Staring into the abyss of a skills gap
According to the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Future Jobs Report, there’ll be 97m new digital-first jobs by 2025. And, what’s more, 85m existing jobs will disappear entirely. We haven’t seen a talent mismatch like this since the Industrial Revolution. Indeed, The WEF advises that 50% of all employees will need to reskill by 2025. In the UK, the figure is even mork stark. McKinsey analysis reveals that if workers are to realise the full benefits of reskilling over the next decade, more than 90 percent of the UK workforce will need to be trained. To put it simply, we’re staring into the abyss of a skills gap.

New technologies are transforming how, where and why people work at an alarming rate that is unlikely to abate. Yet hiring methods, candidate identification and the selection process for potential employees is evolving at a snail’s pace in comparison.

The CV remains the method of choice but it is over 100 years old now. Just look how much the workplace has changed in this time? Consequently, it is creating a problem where the skills and experience necessary for tomorrow are being overlooked from employers intent on recruiting for today. Unless something changes, it’s a problem that is only going to exacerbate.

See beyond the CV
So, what’s the solution? Much like other issues associated with talent acquisition and identification, it all begins at the hiring stage. Business must be bold and embrace new ways of doing things to unlock future potential. In a rapidly changing world, what individuals have done before is becoming less and less useful as a gauge for the future. In fact, in an environment of global skills shortages and ‘The Great Resignation’, defaulting to past experience alone is placing unnecessary shackles on the talent pool.

Businesses need to see beyond the CV and that means using alternative methods to find candidates. One such way is behaviour-based assessments and other psychometric tests. These methods have a string of benefits. Aside from helping employers deal with the volume of applications they receive, the tests are designed to bypass candidates’ efforts to appear socially desirable – in other words, giving the answer they think the interviewer or company wants to hear. This enables organisations to  establish a more complete and transparent picture of the talent pool. The result? The ability to create diverse teams on the basis of potential, mitigating an otherwise inevitable mismatch between the skills that are required in future and the skills they have today.

Capita – smashing the status quo
Capita, the outsourcing and professional services firm, is a great example. It’s a business that recruits heavily for candidates at the early stages of their career, particularly in its customer service roles, which don’t require any specific experience with the skills needed to be successful provided through training. However, its traditional approach of using a CV to decide who to bring for an interview was not finding the right people. So instead it decided to take a radical approach and scrap the CV from the initial stage in the recruitment process and instead use psychometric assessments to look at every candidates’ natural strengths and unique behaviour to gauge if they would be suitable for the business.

In total, Capita received 12,000 applications for its Customer Service role in 2020, 65% of those invited to do so completed the assessment within 24 hours. From an applicant point of view, 93% of candidates enjoyed completing the psychometric assessment, while 88% felt it reflected positively on Capita as an employer.

Further, faster to build a workplace fit for the future
The pandemic not only created a burning platform for change but simultaneously showed both businesses and individuals the art of the possible when it came to the adoption of new ways of working and the adaption of commerce. It means that now is not the time to rest on our laurels but go further, faster to build a workplace fit for the future. It’s time to go beyond the CV and look deeper at candidates, the transferable skills they have now, and the potential that can be unlocked in the future.

Capita is one of several forward-thinking organisations that also include; Lotus Cars, Vitality, Leyton and the BBC, but now is the time to consider alternative methods of hiring for every role, not just early careers where lack of experience means there is no choice but to prioritise potential. With the pace of change accelerating and new technologies transforming the way we work, skills and experience are no longer markers of what makes a ‘good’ candidate. Instead, businesses must be bold, scrap the CV and place potential at the top of hiring agendas.

The apprentice – you’re hired
Such a concept may feel bold, maverick even. But such is the situation we find ourselves in. And it’s not like there isn’t a precedent. Businesses nervous at the prospect of scrapping the CV need only look to the success of apprentice programmes (not programme – an altogether different hiring issue!). These roles give candidates the opportunity to learn new skills or build upon existing ones.

When it comes to hiring, apprenticeships encompass the essence and principles of selecting for potential and training for skills, which will help us tackle the skills shortage. With the help of tech tools, this process can be developed on a wider scale. In turn, businesses will create long lasting change when it comes to hiring, retention and future success.

Rethinking the hiring equation
The uncomfortable truth is that, for the future of work, we’ll need to see more than skills or experience. Ultimately, we now have the chance to rethink the existing hiring equation. Where skills plus experience no longer equals a job. To do so, hiring managers need to be equipped with the right tools, such as behaviour-based assessment methods, which will allow them to unlock potential and see more in people.

HR teams and hiring managers must place potential above all else in order to create diverse, successful teams. Scrapping the CV in favour of technology might seem like a daunting change, but if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. And when it comes to the workplace, and building highly skilled, future-proofed teams, it is the only way to address the spectre of the skills shortage.