The Future of Hiring Practices
I’m going to let you in on a secret, I don’t have a college degree. I’m working on it, slowly but surely. But I don’t have that magical $100,000 piece of paper that says “hey look at how smart I am” that so many jobs these days require. The good news is that I see more and more job postings that have requirements like “Bachelors in Business Administration or equivalent experience.” This is great, but what exactly is “equivalent experience”? How do those who are applying decide if they have the equivalent experience? How do those who are sifting through applications decide that an applicant's experience is of equal value to a bachelor's degree? The biggest question now is, should college degrees be required for entry level positions? Does it make sense to pay someone less if they have the experience but not the degree? College degrees can certainly be valuable, however, I think the larger conversation is between qualitative and quantitative skills, how to measure them, and when they matter.
College gives you qualitative skills. GoogleAd certifications give you qualitative skills. Project Management programs give you qualitative skills. These are some examples of ones that are highlighted on resumes. These provide the hard data that proves you are as good at something as you say you are. These skills are extremely important in certain careers, like being a doctor. If you’re someone in a position where you are looking through resumes you know how easy it is to identify these skills. When your applicant requirements are largely qualitative it is easy to reject people because they don’t have the requirements you have laid out. Qualitative skills are typically what gets your foot in the door. However, quantitative skills are what gets you the job after the interview.
A quantitative skill that I think is extremely undervalued is being funny. I get it, it’s tough to put on a resume “I promise I’ll have your whole office in stitches if you give me an interview.” It’s also difficult to ask on an application if someone was funny, and even if they say they’re hilarious, what are you going to do? Ask them to record a stand up special? Being funny is an important skill, but not easily measurable without doing an interview. Additionally, it is highly subjective. However, being a problem solver is something that is a little more measurable. Applicants that have continued their education in some way and applicants that have things like “Improved process” and “Implemented system” stand out to me. Those two things show me this applicant is interested in bettering themselves, that they take initiative, and that they will translate that to help solve problems.
We talked about part of this issue last week. When hiring leaders, companies look for qualitative skills, but in reality, they should be ensuring that these leaders have the quantitative skills to lead the team. If the leader has those quantitative skills, they will succeed in hiring others around them that are better at the qualitative skills they may be lacking. Ideally, there is a balance between qualitative and quantitative for leaders and as that balance is lost, there are consequences. When you have a leader that has strong qualitative skills, with minimal quantitative skills, they often end up doing the work of their entire team, rather than leading. When you have a leader that has strong quantitative skills, with minimal qualitative skills, they can sometimes struggle to get in the trenches with their team because of their lack of confidence in their skills.
Every generation that moves into hiring roles gets to help define the value of qualitative vs. quantitative skills. I have hope that as Millennials and Gen Z start to be the ones making hiring decisions, quantitative skills will start to outweigh qualitative skills in most industries. We are at a point where almost anything you could ever need to know you could find out in a couple of minutes, so time is really your most important factor. In the short term, it may be better to have someone who knows all the Excel shortcuts rather than someone who has to look them up everytime, but if someone who has to look them up has more space in their brain to creatively solve problems, they may be more advantageous to the company.
While I do have hope for the future of hiring practices there are some practices you could institute right now:
Stop requiring college degrees for positions that don’t really need them
Have an essay question as part of your application process
Have applicants take a personality test as part of your application process
Have applicants take something like a Wonderlic test
Ask applicants for references and talk to them
These things will not entirely solve this problem, but they are small and easy steps to take that will bring us one step closer to hiring practices that bring you applicants that will help level up your business and themselves.
