Globally each second an organisation is making a hiring decision. As a result, it becomes quite important that a skills mismatch does not occur in the process. A skills mismatch is the difference between the skills required to be successful in a position and the skill set of the employee occupying that position. Then, a skills gap is the difference between skills that employers want or need and the skills their workforce offers. Conducting a skills gap analysis helps you identify the skills you need to meet your business goal.
Effects of Skills Mismatch
Hiring errors cost companies a lot of money and result in employee turnover. An ill-matched employee will struggle with their tasks, gradually lowering their motivation and translating into disengagement. Eventually, they will resign, taking your hiring and training investment with them.
Difference Between Skills Gap and Skills Shortage
A skills gap refers to the lack of the skills that employers look for in employees. A skills shortage occurs when the demand for a skill set exceeds its supply in a specific region. A skills shortage means that few people in a geographical area have the specialized skills required for a job. An example of this would be the concerning shortage of doctors in Nigeria.
Skills mismatch is an umbrella term that covers all problems related to the demand and supply of skills, be it undersupply or oversupply. By this definition, skills gaps, skills shortages, overeducation, undereducation, overqualification, and under-qualification all form part of skills mismatch.
There are two main types of skills mismatches.
A horizontal skills mismatch occurs when someone who studied in one field works in another and that’s why this type of mismatch is also also known as a field-of-study mismatch.
A vertical skills mismatch occurs when the level of expertise an individual possesses doesn’t match the level of skills required for a job.
- Overqualified employees have a higher level of studies or experience than what is required by the job.
- Underqualified employees have a lower level of studies or experience than what is required by the job.
Someone with a master’s degree working in a job that only requires a bachelor’s degree and someone without any leadership experience hired as a team leader are both examples of vertical skills mismatch. Both under and overqualified individuals can experience disengagement from their jobs, leading to shorter terms with the company and a high employee turnover rate.
A skills mismatch would exist because of the following situations.
- As a result of emerging technologies, jobs are being created faster than the market can provide qualified candidates.
- Process automation is decreasing the need for certain skills and making them obsolete.
- Some organisations fail to identify skills mismatches during the hiring process.
- When hiring organisations do not provide enough information about the requirements and responsibilities of a position to candidates.
- There is a quite a growing number of candidates looking to change career fields and start a new career.
How Can Skills Mismatches Be Avoided in the Hiring Process?
Taking on a strategic approach to your recruitment process significantly helps to avoid having a skills mismatch occur. With the right checks and filters in place, you will not only avoid hiring mismatched candidates but also make your hiring process more efficient (both for you and your candidates) and save money down the line on employee training programs.
Develop Precise Job Descriptions Explaining the Required Skills
Most times the value of developing detailed job descriptions is underestimated. Spending too much time developing job descriptions often feels like a waste of time for some. But this effort goes a long way in avoiding a skills mismatch.
To start with, choose specific job titles. Ambiguous titles or company jargon will confuse prospects. Then explain your expectations on skills and expertise. Giving a desired education level as the qualifier is not enough. While a degree can signal a certain level of knowledge, it’s not a good measure of a candidate’s proficiency in the job. Mention what you expect from that experience: Are there specific tools that candidates need to use? Do they need to have experience leading teams? Do they need to show results from a certain process?
Make Use of Online Recruitment Solutions Most Effective to Find Better Candidate Prospects
When posting a vacancy online, make sure to include your detailed job description that clarifies the skill level and experience you are looking for. This will ensure your applicant pool filters itself and you don’t have to seek through obvious mismatches.
Platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook can further help avoid skills mismatches by targeting your job postings towards skilled candidates using demographic filters like age, gender, location, occupation, and interests. This way, your postings will only be visible to people who match your brief.
A stronger online presence will also help build your employer brand and allow you to showcase your company culture, benefits, and impact. This increases your chances of attracting in-demand candidates so you don’t have to settle for mismatched employees.
Ask The Right Questions That May Reveal Potential Skills Mismatches
Once you have filtered competent individuals through skills testing, it’s time to dig deeper into their experience through interviewing.
Interviews are time-intensive but can give a lot of insights into how well the candidate can apply their skills on that job.
Behavioural and situational questions are critical for interviews. They prompt candidates to talk about a specific situation and explain how they would handle it. Questions of this nature enable candidates to reflect on their past experiences and discuss their approach. You can test many skills like problem-solving, team management, project management, and critical thinking.
Here are some situational interview questions you can explore
- Can you tell me about a time when your team was in a difficult situation and how you helped overcome it? This question tests leadership skills.
- If an urgent project comes up, how would you adjust your current schedule and commitments? This will query project management and organizational skills.
- Can you tell me about a time when your superior wasn’t available and you had to make the call? Use this question to test decision-making skills.
- Can you tell me about a time when you helped resolve differences in your team? Use this question to identify how they operate in a team environment.
Open-ended questions like these are great for recognizing soft skills and encourage candidates to discuss scenarios in great detail. The added advantage is that you’d be able to ascertain their communication skills as well.
Skill Assessments Help Eliminate Any Mismatch Seamlessly
It is common for candidates to deceive employers in the recruitment process. This includes lying, exaggerating, hiding information, or mirroring what the interviewer wants to hear during an interview.
How do companies mitigate this risk? Most companies now use pre-employment skills assessments to screen candidates. Skills assessments help you measure candidates’ abilities so you don’t waste time on in-depth reviews of mismatched employees.
Skills assessments can take various forms, from skills tests to more elaborate test projects, and even role simulation exercises and psychometric skills assessments. Digitally available tests created by experts in their fields can help you quickly and objectively rank candidates, essentially eliminating skills mismatches.
Manpower Outsourcing Can Help Bride the Skills Gap
Skill shortages can be regional. When specific jobs spring up in certain parts of the world, fewer people may be able to provide the required skills either because of extremely high demand or because of a low supply.
Outsourcing helps widen your talent pool to find candidates with the required skills. It can take decades for a country to shorten its skill shortage so outsourcing continues to gain popularity. Hiring remote workers, or freelancers, or partnering with outsourcing companies can help bridge the gap much quicker.
In summary, skills mismatch may not seem like a terrible thing at first: an overqualified candidate, you may think, will surely offer lots to a lower position, a candidate trained in a different field can bring in new ideas, and someone who lacks expertise can be eager to receive training and grow to meet your needs.
While all those scenarios can be true, the realities of skills mismatch show that the opposite is often what happens: overqualified employees get bored and become disengaged, employees from a different field struggle to understand the requirements of the job, and employees who lack experience quickly get overwhelmed.
Skills mismatch can be dangerous and turn out costly for your company. And while you cannot stop it from showing up in your recruitment efforts, there is so much you can do to eliminate skills mismatch from your hiring process.
Eliminating skills mismatches through your hiring process will lead to better options, and better options lead to better hires, and better hires will be successful at their job for many years to come.
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