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Essential Job Skills and How to Assess Them While Recruiting

Work skills play a crucial role in the success of any firm as they impact employee performance, productivity, and quality of work. Human resources managers must therefore be able to recognize and assess job candidates' work talents in addition to the demands and expectations of the organization.

These abilities can take many different forms, including organizational, creative, social, technical, and communicative. While some are gained via experience or personality, others are obtained through formal education or professional training.

This article will define job skills and discuss the significance of having them. We will also concentrate on their assessment, case studies, and crucial suggestions to help you streamline your hiring procedure.

What are Job Skills?

The abilities, knowledge, and skills required to do a professional task successfully and efficiently are referred to as work skills. These abilities can be transversal, meaning they can be used in a variety of professional contexts, or they can be sector- or area-specific. Here, we outline the two primary categories:

Specific Job Skills

They are those that have a direct bearing on how a specific task or function is carried out inside a company. For instance, being able to use a specialized machine or tool, speaking a foreign language, or being proficient in programming in a particular computer language.

Transversal Skills

They refer to a collection of abilities that support an employee's growth on both a personal and professional level and can be applied to a variety of professional settings. For instance, being able to solve issues, collaborate with others, adjust to change, lead, and communicate effectively are just a few examples.

Work skill classification based on source or mode of acquisition

  • Innate abilities: These depend on an individual's personality or heredity. For instance, being creative, having an excellent memory, being numerate, etc.
  • Acquired skills: Those that are gained from ongoing practice, job experience, professional or academic instruction, or both. For instance, mastering a technique or work process, being knowledgeable about a certain subject, or being able to use a computer software.

Why is having knowledge about job skills important?

It's critical to understand job skills for a number of reasons:

  • With them, job seekers can assess their professional strengths and weaknesses, focus their career on the field or industry that most interests them and fits their skills, set themselves apart from the competition with their qualifications and skills, and show how their skills and abilities will benefit the organization.
  • HR managers can help define the perfect candidate profile for a position, choose the best applicants based on their work experience, streamline the hiring process by cutting down on time and related expenses, and enhance the caliber of the company's human capital.
  • For the business, it enables you to have skilled and driven workers who can complete tasks quickly and well; it also boosts their productivity and makes them more competitive in the market, lowers absenteeism and turnover, fosters a positive work atmosphere, and encourages innovation and organizational growth.

Examples of Work Skills that Should be Considered

When hiring employees, a variety of work skills might be considered based on the industry, region, level, and purpose of the position. Regardless of their line of work, there are some job abilities that are thought to be necessary for any worker in the twenty-first century. Here are a handful of them:

Communication

The capacity to communicate concepts, viewpoints, feelings, and facts in a clear, accurate, and recipient-appropriate manner. It entails understanding how to use various communication channels and tools, adjust verbal and nonverbal language to the medium and goal of communication, give and receive feedback, and actively listen.

Teamwork

innate ability to work cooperatively with others, sharing resources, duties, and expertise in order to accomplish a shared objective. It entails understanding how to collaborate, respect, trust, encourage, and value other team members in addition to taking on the proper position in accordance with the demands of the group.

Solving issues

Ability to recognize, evaluate, and use critical, logical, and creative thinking to address problems or circumstances that come up at work. It calls for the ability to identify the issue, gather pertinent data, come up with potential solutions, weigh the benefits and drawbacks of each, select the best one, and put it into action.

Adjustment to Shift

Capacity to adapt positively and pro-actively to changing conditions or events that arise in the workplace. Here, it's critical to understand how to prepare for, accept, and take advantage of changes as chances for growth and improvement, adapt daily routines and working methods, manage stress and uncertainty, etc.

Innovation

It is the capacity to produce or implement unique, cutting-edge concepts that enhance the work or the company. It entails understanding how to identify unmet wants or issues, investigate various information and inspiration sources, merge or modify preexisting concepts, test out novel fixes or advancements, etc.

Issues with Assessing Job Competencies When Recruiting Employees

Assessing job skills throughout the hiring process is not a simple or error-free process. Among the principal difficulties that may arise are:

  • Lack of consensus or clarity on the job profile: You face the danger of choosing applicants who are unfit for the position if you do not have a current and accurate definition of the duties, responsibilities, and qualifications of the position you wish to fill. the actual requirements of the business or that are not aligned with the organization's objectives.
  • Difficulty in measuring or contrasting work talents: Because many work skills depend on the context, the criteria, or the evaluator's point of view, they are challenging to measure or verify objectively. Furthermore, in an effort to improve their impression during interviews or on their resumes, some candidates could embellish or misrepresent their work experience.
  • Insufficient time or resources to assess every applicant: In certain hiring procedures, tens of thousands or even more resumes are sent, which need to be examined and whittled down to the best prospects. This entails a significant time investment as well as the use of material, human, and other resources that are frequently unavailable or improperly optimized.
  • Influence of subjective variables or biases on the evaluation: In certain cases, the candidate's or the evaluator's subjective factors or biases may skew the candidate's perception or judgment of the job abilities being evaluated. For instance, one's own empathy or dislike, societal preconceptions or biases, anxiety or emotional strain, etc.

Are you familiar with professionograms? Read this post to find out.

Why Not Assess Talents Using a Written Resume?

A written resume is a conventional and popular method for showcasing a job candidate's educational background and professional experience. However, because of a number of shortcomings, it is not the best method for assessing work skills:

  • The written CV merely highlights the skills and abilities the candidate claims to have, not what they truly know or are capable of doing. As such, it fails to accurately represent the candidate's job talents. It may also be fabricated, outdated, or incomplete, which makes it challenging to confirm the accuracy and applicability of the job abilities stated.
  • It prevents you from appreciating transversal work skills because written resumes primarily highlight particular work skills, like degrees, courses, and certificates earned. It does not, however, demonstrate transversal work abilities, which are just as crucial, if not more so, for professional performance. These skills include problem solving, teamwork, and communication.
  • It is typically a dull and monotonous document, full of data and figures that do not reflect the personality, motivation, or unique worth of the applicant, therefore it does not draw attention or pique interest. Additionally, hiring managers could become disinterested or lose their attention span when they receive so many resumes that are written similarly.

Video Resumes: An Effective Way to Connect with Candidates

A creative and useful technique for showcasing and assessing a job candidate's professional skills is the video resume. The candidate introduces themselves and dynamically and creatively showcases their professional talents and qualifications in a brief video.

Benefits Compared to a Written Resume

  • It allows you to demonstrate not just what the candidate claims to know or be able to accomplish, but also how they go about doing it. It represents an approximate reality of job skills. The video CV also boosts the candidate's reputation and trustworthiness because it is harder to forge or manipulate.
  • It makes it easier to observe how a candidate interacts, communicates, expresses himself, and behaves in a professional setting, which helps you recognize transversal work qualities. As a result, transversal work abilities that are critical for success in the workplace, like problem-solving, cooperation, and communication, can be assessed.
  • Draws interest and attention: Compared to a written resume, this format is more eye-catching and unique, drawing the interest and attention of human resources managers. Additionally, you can have a deeper understanding of the candidate's personality, motivation, and unique value by meeting with and speaking with them in person.

How to Use Curriculum Videos to Assess Work Skills

Using curriculum videos, the following procedures can be used to assess work skills:

  • Establish the evaluation criteria. Prior to viewing the instructional videos, you should have a clear idea of the job abilities you wish to assess and the degree or level of each one. To do this, the candidates' work skills might be measured and compared using a quantitative or qualitative scale.
  • Watch the résumé videos. Pay close attention to each one, focus on the content, and make a note of any good or bad observations regarding the job abilities you wish to assess. Additionally, keep yourself free from any prejudices or subjective elements that can skew the rating.
  • Rate job skills: Using previously defined standards, give each job skill a score. When evaluating a candidate, strive to be impartial and consistent while considering both their advantages and disadvantages.
  • Compare and choose the best candidates: Examine each candidate's scores and choose the ones who have the greatest credentials for the job's necessary work skills. To confirm or rule out their suitability, the best applicants may be pre-selected, screened, and invited to a personal interview or practical test.

Final Suggestions

In closing, we would like to make a few further suggestions to enhance the hiring and people selection process based on job skills:

  • Combine various evaluation tools and methods: It is advised to combine the written resume, personal interview, practical test, psychotechnical exam, and other evaluation tools and methods with the CV video.
  • Update and modify the job profile: The requirements and expectations of the business as well as the labor market must be taken into consideration when updating the profile of the position that has to be filled on a regular basis.
  • It is imperative to provide training, guidance, and sensitization to the persons responsible for evaluating work capabilities regarding the criteria, instruments, and methodologies that will be employed.
  • Utilize CazVid: download our app, register, and make use of its features to obtain instructional videos, assess, and improve your hiring procedure. It is totally free.

In Summary

Work skills are essential to an employee's performance in the workplace as well as the expansion and advancement of any company. Human resources managers must therefore be able to recognize and assess job candidates' work talents in addition to the demands and expectations of the organization.

In this scenario, the video CV turns into a creative and useful tool for showcasing and assessing work skills because it lets you see not just what the applicant claims to know or be capable of, but also how he goes about doing it. Furthermore, the movie facilitates the understanding of transversal work skills—like problem-solving, cooperation, and communication—which are critical for successful professional performance.

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