Generative AI’s ability to analyze resumes makes it possible for employers to prioritize skills at scale.

“What’s exciting about skills-first hiring is that it has the potential to solve core employer challenges and open up new opportunities for job seekers who are too often screened out despite having the skills to do the job,” said Liz Voigt, senior manager of social impact at Indeed. “When you look at the challenges that employers are facing — not finding quality talent, hiring taking too long, troubles with retention, difficulty diversifying their workforce — skills-first hiring can help them address those challenges today and in the future.” 

Skills-first hiring focuses on sourcing and evaluating candidates based on skills rather than proxy requirements like degrees, prior positions, and years of industry experience. The term “skills-first” also acknowledges that formal education and certifications are required in some industries. There’s good reason to adopt a skills-first strategy: Hiring managers who practice skills-first hiring find it twice as easy to find qualified candidates than hiring managers who do not.

While many employers are open to the philosophical shift to skills-first hiring, it can be challenging to execute at scale, largely because it’s difficult to identify the skills required for the job, glean applicants’ skill sets from their resumes, and assess those skills. But the advancement of generative AI has the potential to change that. “AI gives us the opportunity to analyze both job descriptions and resumes to find out what key skills are needed to succeed,” said Hannah Calhoon, vice president of product at Indeed. 

Use AI to uncover skills-based matches 

Generative AI is able to digest, organize, and formulate conclusions from large amounts of unstructured data. In the past, applicants would have to include the exact language used in a job description to be recognized as a potential match. Now, if a job seeker describes their skills well in a qualitative way, generative AI has the potential to understand what capabilities are being described and translate them into whatever taxonomy the employer is looking for. For example, an applicant might note their background working the register at a restaurant while an employer is looking for “retail point-of-sale” experience.

Now, if a job seeker describes their skills well in a qualitative way, generative AI has the potential to understand what capabilities are being described and translate them into whatever taxonomy the employer is looking for.

“That’s promising for job seekers without as much practice describing their work experience and skills in very particular corporate language,” Calhoon said.

Expand your definition of a quality candidate

AI’s use to enable skills-first hiring is a potential sea change for employers and job seekers alike, especially in tight labor markets. Canada is living through a skills shortage and mismatch. 

The shortage is in specific industries only. While Canadians are the most educated among G7 countries, some job seekers express challenges in finding work as their skills are best suited for industries and sectors where the demand is low, or their skills may exceed the value required for the job. 

The country is also experiencing a skills mismatch whereby newcomers who arrive in Canada experience challenges in finding work as their skills don’t translate to the jobs they could perform. Statistics Canada found that from 2001 to 2016, the percentage of workers earning a bachelor’s degree or higher increased by 1.7 million, but only half of these workerswere absorbed into high-skilled occupations. In a previous Indeed Canada study, we found that 20% of newcomers who have been in Canada for less than a year say education is a barrier to finding work. Newcomers may need to provide further certification for technical roles despite years of industry experience. Others may not be considered for roles they are suited for due to a lack of ‘Canadian experience.’ While provinces like Ontario are working towards legislation to remove the Canadian experience requirement in job postings, it still remains an obstacle to newcomers finding work in Canada. 

While some industries require legal certification, skills-first hiring can help employers “screen in” these job seekers and others who are underrepresented in the workforce but just as able to succeed if given the chance. Generative AI can help employers recognize the capabilities they bring to the table.

Take a proactive approach to responsible AI and mitigating bias

AI can potentially make the entire labor market more equitable and effective — but bias remains a risk. 

To use AI effectively for skills-first hiring, talent professionals must understand how models have been developed and trained and audit and monitor those models for bias. “As folks are thinking about integrating AI tools into their hiring processes, it’s important that the technology isn’t perpetuating those same things that make it hard for job seekers in the first place,” Calhoon said.

Use a skills-first approach to reimagine hiring and upskilling

Models become more capable of identifying skills as they are fed more data and given more feedback about what constitutes a quality match. That, in turn, gives employers the opportunity to take a proactive approach to hiring. 

Rather than posting a job and waiting for applicants to respond, employers can search the millions of profiles on Indeed for specific job criteria based on information collected from the job seeker. Indeed’s Smart Sourcing generative AI provides an explanation of the candidate’s potential overlapping qualifications with the employer’s job description. This helps hiring managers sift through candidate resumes more efficiently. 

A skills-first strategy doesn’t stop with hiring. It’s also important for upskilling, which is increasingly critical in a rapidly changing labor market. According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report, 50% of workers will need to learn new skills by 2025. Organizations with a skills-first hiring strategy will have a better view of employees’ capabilities and how they can be adapted, augmented, and transferred. They’ll also have a mindset and culture that supports employees’ potential to learn and grow as the economy and the labor market change over time. 

“Skills-first hiring that’s fully implemented — from dropping degree requirements all the way through skills-based evaluation and upskilling on the job — can translate into significant cost savings,” Voigt said. “It makes sense, it’s better for business, and when it’s done right with efforts to remove other biases from the hiring process, it can be more equitable.”  

Keep hiring human

Nobody wants to be hired by a computer. They want to be hired by a human who is part of a company with a culture, purpose, and mission. As crucial as AI will be to skills-first hiring, talent acquisition, and management always starts and end with humans. 

“What AI allows us to do is to help recruiters and talent professionals take a broader view of what a high-quality candidate looks like,” Calhoon said, “and to do that in a really data-driven way so that it doesn’t feel like a risk to consider candidates they might not have considered before.”

Learn how Indeed is making hiring simpler, faster, and more human.

This post was created by Indeed with Insider Studios. 

–>