Recruitment and selection: should you choose degrees or competencies?

Finally, often after years of grinding away, the moment has come. You can collect your diploma. Who doesn’t remember that wonderful feeling? The idea that the world is at your feet, and that you can finally show an eager employer everything you have learned. 

In today’s labor market, employers are indeed eager. After all, there are more vacancies than job seekers. But a smart recruiter looks beyond the end of their nose during recruitment and selection. They don’t set selection criteria aimed only at “completed degrees.” No, they also look at a person’s personality, talents, and interests. That doesn’t just widen the target group for the vacancy. Looking at a résumé differently also means the employee who walks in later is someone everyone is happy with, according to scientific research.

Think about it. Would you rather have a cheerful starter or career changer as a colleague, who is eager to learn new things? Or a colleague who leans a bit complacently on a twenty-year-old diploma that is gathering dust in the attic by now, just like the knowledge that was never refreshed? And if you already have a team full of “red” types, who jostle to get a word in and to get promoted, more of the same is the last thing you need. The department only gets balanced when a different, calmer personality with different competencies is placed opposite them. 

It really pays off to take the trouble during the application process to look beyond which diploma someone has in their pocket. On the shop floor, what matters is what someone truly can do and does in daily practice. What talent does he or she have? What is their work ethic? And what personality does that new colleague bring? Those are the things that really matter. 

If a diploma is no longer sacred, how do you set up the recruitment & selection process? And how do you maintain the right level of knowledge in your organization?

Here are 3 recruitment and selection tips from us! 

Tip 1. Competency-based recruitment and selection

In most industries, skills are of great importance. By focusing less on qualifications earned and more on competency-based recruitment, you have a better chance that your new employee truly matches your needs.

During the selection interview, dig deeper into talents. What is the applicant really passionate about? What are their drivers, their passions? These matter so much because doing what you enjoy generates flow. You become enthusiastic, productive, and you want to keep developing. All of this often leads to job satisfaction. 

An applicant with the right flow is the best employee you can get. No diploma can compete with that.

Don’t stop at the obligatory job interview. An assessment can provide so much more information about personal drivers, talent, and competencies. Fortunately, these days you don’t necessarily need to go to an expensive psychological consultancy. There are countless good and quick online tests on the market that you can fully tailor to your organization.

Tip 2. Learning and development after the application process 

Is this a plea to shred all diplomas and throw education overboard when it comes to recruiting staff? No, certainly not! Especially in a world where developments move faster than light, it is important to keep knowledge up to date at all times. If you let the knowledge in your organization slacken, the smarter competitors will skip past you, grinning. 

Therefore, encourage your employees to keep up and constantly acquire new knowledge. This doesn’t have to involve long, energy-draining training programs. Sitting in classrooms for hours, collecting a diploma, and then taking in nothing more is no longer in keeping with the times. 

Fortunately, there is another way. Set up an attractive online learning environment full of short knowledge snacks, interesting footage from the shop floor, and links to trends and developments in your industry. 

Create a varied mix of e-learning, live training, and flipped classrooms. Give your employees as much freedom as possible in their choices. Let them graze freely in a meadow full of flowery information. 

Curious about more tips on how to motivate your employees? Then read on here.

Tip 3. Peer knowledge sharing

Industry-specific knowledge or targeted tips and tricks that fit your organization are usually not learned in a classroom. You learn them by doing or by experiencing them in practice. So invest in peer knowledge sharing. It anchors the knowledge already present in your company and promotes collaboration among colleagues.

Peer knowledge sharing is actually always valuable:

• During onboarding: pair a buddy with the new employee, who can show the way around the organization but also serve as a trusted go-to person.
• During employment: have colleagues from different departments regularly exchange experiences. That increases mutual understanding and encourages collaboration. Don’t make this too formal: a “lunch and learn” session, where anyone can join to listen to a colleague who takes the stage, works fine, for example. A multidisciplinary online chat room where employees can find each other with professional questions is also a good idea.
• Upon impending departure: most departing colleagues hold important knowledge. Make sure this valuable information doesn’t leave the building at the same time as the employee. By deliberately creating time and space for handover, you retain the knowledge in the company. It can be a good idea to design an online format where departing colleagues can safely and clearly record their information according to a fixed template.

Read much, much more about knowledge sharing in organizations! 

Job posting example

To tie this story together, we give an example of a job posting text that may apply to you. That way, you have some concrete handles to get started with. Here we go!

“You have a growth mindset and the will to learn. No shortage of motivation!”

“You are enterprising and get started proactively. You don’t wait until someone asks something of you.” 

“You tend to take the lead and don’t mind being ultimately responsible.”

“You are curious by nature and always wonder about the ‘why’ behind the story.” 

Or the opposite: 

“You have a calm personality, are modest, and analyze from a distance. At the right moment, you know how to take over the conversation.” 

Need more tips on recruitment and selection?

Then you’ve come to the right place. We know a lot about the countless online possibilities for sharing knowledge, developing competencies, and discovering talent, which you can then turn into the perfect job posting texts and selection criteria. So feel free to contact us!