While there are always going to be some jobs for which degrees will be needed: trust will be very low in medical professionals, for example, who have no serious academic qualifications under their belt – there has been a move over the last couple of years towards hiring people who have practical knowledge and skills rather than academic qualifications and ‘paper’ experience. Why is this skills based hiring occurring and what does it mean for the workplace?
Fine Balance
There is a fine balance in any existing business model between the practical, hands-on workers who are skills based, ‘qualified by experience’ as the saying goes – but who are perhaps lacking when it comes to seeing the big picture and predicting the path of the industry, or even the individual company, against global or nationwide economic trends, and those who are great at broad stroke forecasts and situating their business against the industry as a whole, but who do not fully understand the minutiae of the manufacturing process, and why some processes cannot be safely or reliably sped up or otherwise streamlined. The current shift towards more skills-based hirings is not a radical novelty – rather it is a return to this fine balance, as previous decades skewed towards placing more importance on degrees or paper qualifications rather than practical but ‘unpapered’ experiences.
Better Productivity
Having more skilled workers getting hands on with any business is a great way to almost instantly boost productivity, with processes running smoothly, risk assessments and training being completed in a timely and accurate manner. This is because there is a learning curve for graduates with no practical experience between starting their first job and being confident that they know what they are doing and the consequences of changing or amending steps in the production process.
Shortsightedness for the Long Term
But there are some issues with choosing employees based entirely on their skillset, without any thought to their critical thinking processes or big picture perspectives – features where graduates will shine. Having the ability to work well now does not guarantee flexibility and willingness to change when circumstances demand it. Degreed employees can be better at anticipating and moving rapidly in response to seemingly subtle changes that a more head-down employee will perhaps miss.
Is My Degree Useless Now?
It is still useful to have a degree – this new trend does not mean that people with degrees are ignored: rather, it means that people with degrees and valuable skills are rated more highly than those with just degrees. Many job searches now, with skill-based recruitment in in mind, search for experience first, degrees later – but this does not mean that in a tight competition between yourself and another – equally skilled, but not necessarily degreed – candidate, your degree will not give you the extra edge to successfully claim the job. For more details about finding your perfect skills-based position, go to https://www.eaglehead-hunters.co.uk/about-us/.
Little Change to Management – For Now!
However, this movement is largely taking place at middle-management and below, so it will take some time for it to reach the rarefied heights of the C-Suite as employees work their way up through the hierarchy.
The move to skills based hiring can only be a good one, allowing those with experience to reap the benefit of their knowledge, while training graduates in the practical skills they will need to do the job. This system makes the best of both worlds – the practical and the academic – and does not unthinkingly discriminate against someone who might, if given the chance, turn out to be the perfect candidate.
