Webinar: Is skills-based hiring the key to candidate experience?

[00:00:06] Hi, everybody. Lovely to see you. Thank you for spending your lunch time with us. Please do feel free to dig into your lunch whilst we're chatting and kill two birds with one stone over the next hour. It's always a good, a good time, actually. People are always in a good mood when they're having their lunch. Good time to do a webinar we have afterwards. Hey, we'll have to have hours afterwards. Yes, exactly. I did have I a bacon, so, breakfast. [00:00:35] Yeah. We'll just let a few more people come into the room. And then we will get going. We've got lots to cover today. I'm gonna start off by doing a kind of introduction to skills-based hiring. Gonna talk a little bit about how organizations can actually carry out skills-based hiring in their organization. And then we're gonna have a little look at the kind of candidate value of that as well. And then yes, Sarah will be taking over to talk us through how onboarding kind of factors into skills-based hiring in particular. Absolutely. Looking forward to it. [00:01:12] Yeah. Great. I suppose for a few people who are kind of regular attendees, you may notice that we're using a different platform. Hopefully it's a positive experience. If you have any questions, do pop us a message in the chat. Lots of people say hi. Yeah, do make this as interactive as possible. We will try to keep kind of five to 10 minutes at the end for questions. So we won't get back to you straight away, but do pop them in the chat and we'll we'll get back to you at the end of the webinar. [00:01:44] Alrighty, let's dive in. So quick introduction for those who don't know, I am Lauren. I'm a customer success manager among a few other hats at AssessFirst, which is particularly relevant for this webinar, and I'll go into some more detail with that later. But yeah my background is actually in talent acquisition. I've worked both agency side and in-house ta. I have a first class degree in psychology. And that all kind of comes together very nicely for my position at AssessFirst now, which is to really make sure that our clients are utilizing the tool in the very best way that they know how [00:02:23] To interpret results. They are analyzing the data effectively, et cetera, et cetera. Ultimately ending up in getting the very best hires that they can, and then retaining those hires as well. So it's a little bit about me. Over to you, Sarah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. So I'm Sarah Wardle. For those of you who don't know me, I'm the Relationship Development Director at Eli Onboarding. I've been with the business over five years now. Been in the industry over 20 years. Mainly well across the lifespan of my career, concentrating on employee experience all the way through from the attraction [00:03:01] Through to retention. And obviously the onboarding piece is a big part of that. So Eli, essentially we help businesses and HR professionals better onboard and engage their new hires when they're joining. It aligns very well with the AssessFirst prospect as well, because obviously we're all about creating a better candidate experience and retaining people and talent for the long term. [00:03:29] Absolutely good To be here. Brilliant. So, as mentioned the three kind of key topics is actually what is skills-based hiring? We were just saying before we went live that it's certainly becoming a hot topic. I would go as far to say it's the topic for 2025. Last year it was, you know, scratching the surface. People were interested in skills-based hiring, but I really think now people are understanding the pains of not being a skills-based organization. So there's now a bit of a catch up. I go as far to see oh, I forgot our poll. [00:03:59] We have a quick poll for you all. It's the new system. Yeah, this is a good time just to see how you guys are all feeling. Tell us how you're getting on today. Tell us how you're feeling about the webinar as well. Backtrack. So yeah, gonna be looking at skills-based hiring seeing how yeah, it can impact an organization. [00:04:20] Yeah, fair play. Understood. Cool. Love this, guys. That's super positive to hear. You're not getting any negative feedback there, so that's all good. Everyone's happy to be. [00:04:33] Absolutely. Yeah, then we'll be looking at the value add for candidates. As Sarah's just said, you know, it's really important through these processes that we keep our candidates centric and aligned really with the processes that we create. And then we'll be looking at, yeah, the role of onboarding and why it's so important to get right, particularly if you're looking to move to being a skills-based organization. [00:04:57] So we're gonna take you through the experience of a, of a candidate. Now, Beth is a fictional candidate but we thought it would be a great kind of way to talk about skills-based hiring and the impact it can really have. So, Beth at the moment, she's a primary school teacher. She's worked in the industry for 10 years now. Unfortunately, like many teachers in the uk she's deciding to leave the industry. She's overworked, she's underpaid and she feels like she's not really able to reach our full potential in that sector. [00:05:32] So she's actually been looking into joining a large corporate business as their learning and development consultant. Now, imagine that Beth's sent her CV off to a number of different positions, a number of different companies. Company A has the CV come through in the a TS and is rejected almost immediately because on her cv, she's a primary school teacher. She had her, is it PC from university. And as far as this business is concerned, she doesn't have the experience in l and d or within the corporate environment to be successful. So straight away, she receives that rejection. [00:06:10] Company B, however, is a skills-based organization, rather than just simply looking at Beth's CV in the application stage, they also asked her to talk about her top skills. So some of the top skills that she talked about were things like instructional design and curriculum development, because she's built lesson plans for students for years and years, which I directly translate to being able to create corporate training programs. Public speaking is also one of her strengths. Again, she's been teaching, she's had to kind of be able to communicate in a clear and engaging way. She's super adaptable [00:06:46] And very good at problem solving. Teachers, I would, I would definitely attest to the fact that they are constantly having to adapt their approach. They deal with lots of different students, lots of different challenges. Again, particularly relevant for corporate training. From a stakeholder management perspective, she's collaborating with parents, with leadership, with support staff. She's having to make sure that her programs align with all different types of organization expectations, which again, mirrors the expectation of working in a corporate setting. And of course, from a coaching and development perspective, teaching goes way beyond just kind of, you know, [00:07:21] Teaching people off the curriculum. She's been guiding students to value things like learning and growth, and that would be the same as she does for employees. [00:07:29] So, because Beth was able to both identify these transferable skills in her application, and then demonstrate these skills through her interview, she was able to be to be hired into this position. [00:07:42] So that's just a quick idea, really to kind of encapsulate what skills-based hiring does, and the way that it opens up doors for candidates and also massively broadens the candidate pool for your organizations as well. But with those who have the right skill sets that possibly wouldn't be, wouldn't be considered. [00:08:00] So Dominic recently re published some research which suggests that 90% of the organizations that they surveyed are experimenting with a skills-based approach, which is massive. We've already touched on kind of the context of what a skills-based organization is, but ultimately it's just simply down to focusing what an employee is capable of doing rather than simply just their job roles. [00:08:25] The three kind of core categories, I guess, of skills-based organizations, obviously, number one is that they prioritize skills. The next is that they are breaking down roles. So rather than kind of putting people into boxes based on their job titles, we're actually looking at the task that they are capable and having to carry out. Which means that when we look at the specific tasks related to an organizational need, we're then able to break down the skills that are required for those specific jobs, specific roles and then understand who is best placed within that organization to carry those out. [00:09:02] Now, the key benefit of this is that it's massively enhancing organizational agility. By being able to hire people into our teams and identify people within our teams, based on their skillset, companies are able to adapt much quicker because they can kind of pinpoint who in their team has the right skillset to carry out, you know, new projects, maybe unforeseen situations that they find themselves within. So really kind of remaining super agile. [00:09:31] So how do we actually go about car kind of becoming a skills-based organization? So it does require some planning. Okay. The first step is actually about looking at what's existing within your team right now. So some of the clients that we're working with at AssessFirst have been carrying up this step, and they've basically been identifying, okay, so what technical skills are required per position or per project, and what soft skills are required in the same way. [00:10:00] Then they're going, okay, what do we have in the team right now that meets these expectations? And what are we lacking? Kind of starting a gap analysis process to say, what do we need to fill? [00:10:11] So rather than just focusing on technical abilities, actually what is required as a, as a kind of hard skill, we also are then able to look at, in our interview process the soft skills that are gonna help people out in our position in our company as well. So we're going, cool, we know you've got experience, for example, to do the job, but also we wanna look at those who have the potential to carry out these positions in the future as well, because it's those soft skills things like communication, adaptability, problem solving that are actually gonna give us confidence [00:10:41] That our candidates can adapt. You know, I think it's, it's very fair to say that the market is changing so quickly at the moment. We can't really predict what we're gonna need in terms of skills in five years time. So we need to hire people who can adjust to these market shifts, who can adapt to the myriad new technologies that we find ourselves working with every day. And also just the way that our business needs are changing too. So there's a couple of kind of key components of a skills map. So first of all, [00:11:09] We would look at kind of skill categories. So as I've just said, technical skills, soft skills, leadership. We could then break down to look at role-based skills, then things like proficiency levels. Do we have people who are to kind of more junior level of developing a skill? Do we have experts in this skill? Who are the skill owners? So which actual employees in our team possess these skills? And what proficiency level are they? And then looking at bringing in the recommended learning resources to actually bridge these gaps as well. So really having a solid idea of, [00:11:39] Of your starting point is really crucial. Next, we're gonna be looking at prioritizing soft skills, as we just talked about there. It's really important that people we have in our team can adapt and adjust. This is what's gonna make them sustainable hires. This is what's gonna give you your return on investment from the people you're bringing into your team. And of course, this is where solutions like AssessFirst, and other assessment providers really kind of come into their own to give you that way of assessing what's a candidate is capable of, both in terms [00:12:11] Of their personality, their natural talents, their motivations, what actually drives them, what gives them energy in their day-to-day position, and what they're capable of in terms of their cognitive ability as well. [00:12:22] So you're not just adding a wider candidate pool by prioritizing soft skills, then also meeting the role requirements, and you're adding agility to your workforce as well. [00:12:34] So the next part and I mentioned earlier about me kind of having many hats at AssessFirst. I've been with the business for three years, and within that time I've been involved in lots of varied projects. I've had a chance to really kind of push my capability, and my potential to the max because the business has been able to identify through my AssessFirst results through the way that I'm in my day-to-day position where I can add value. So this has taken me from talent acquisition. It's taken me to more HR business partnering, onboarding specialist customer success manager. [00:13:11] Because what we can do when we're looking at flexible positions is not just tying someone down to a job title. So we're really able to utilize people to their full potential. Give your team a chance of, or your employees a chance of broadening their skillsets, of trying different things within the team, ultimately making themselves more retainable as well, because they add more value across a wider a wider kind of function. And making sure that, yeah, you kind of really fill that agility piece to the very, to the very kind of max that it can be. [00:13:43] So we're really kind of taking internal mobility to a new level here but remaining very close to our, to our team members as well, to find out what it's that they actually wanna to do and where they want to progress internally as well. [00:13:56] So, workforce planning is a big topic. It's one that is, I think, getting more and more challenging because as I said earlier, it's almost impossible to predict what our kind of roles and businesses are gonna require in five years time. But using that skills map, we can start identifying the gaps in our team. You know, do we actually need more people who maybe are more adaptable to change? Maybe we need more people who have a focus on facts and data. Maybe we need more people who are assertive and can lead teams. [00:14:27] That's then gonna give you a really great opportunity to create personalized training for your, for your team as well, rather than getting to that pain point of realizing what you don't have you know, that you're going to need in three years time due to succession or whatever it might be. Start filling those gaps now. Start giving your team the ability to be upskilled so that, so that they have those skills required in the future as well. And of course, that goes for both your technical skills and those soft skills too. [00:14:56] Cool. So a little bit about the impact then. So when it comes to skills-based hiring, it's not just about the value that it brings us as a, as an organization in terms of kind of making more sustainable environment to work within. Companies that hire on skills are 107% more likely to place the right talent in the right roles. You've got a more fair process. You are giving underrepresented groups a chance to be represented based on their soft skills, based on their talents, not just looking at job history. [00:15:33] It's also reducing unconscious bias as well. So we've seen this time and time again at AssessFirst where you are in a heavily male dominated industry. You start hiring based on soft skills, and all of a sudden you get equal gender representation. 'cause we're removing the unconscious bias that can, that can hold us back. [00:15:52] Just lost my mouse. You're 98% more likely to retain top talent. You know, as we've just talked about, it's a much more sustainable way of hiring our teams. The process is more transparent. You have a quicker interview process less unnecessary rounds of trying to figure out someone's kind of core talents and motivations. And ultimately, candidates are more likely to be in positions that optimize their natural talents and their natural strengths. And of course, the type, the types of positions that keep them more engaged as well. [00:16:26] Finally, candidates are 79% more likely to have a positive employee experience within these positions, as well as just talked about, got much higher engagement levels, much stronger motivation levels. Candidates feel that they can reach their full potential, but also that they keep growing. You know, we're not having the stagnation that can exist when we stay in the same type of position, the whole way through our careers. We're really getting the opportunity to grow and adapt and yeah, kind of showcase their full potential. Sarah, over to you. Excellent, thank you. So moving on to the role [00:17:03] Of onboarding in a skills-based organization. As you can imagine from everything that Lauren just said, this is absolutely critical as these new hires will need a lot of support a lot more support than someone staying, you know, within the same role or industry. So preparing someone to be ready for their new role will have a lasting effect on their performance and productivity in the long term. [00:17:29] I'm getting used to the system too, hopefully. So before we kind of delve into that, if we take a step back for a minute and talk around the costs of onboarding, the cost of onboarding a new hiring to an organization can be huge, as I'm sure most of you on this call know. Thinking of the admin involved, the time hiring manager spends the equipment, events, you know, all of that, the training costs involved this was estimated by the talent labs at around three to 6,000 pounds in the UK per person. So it is a costly and time consuming activity, [00:18:02] But obviously necessary. Coupled with that data from the A IHR report unfortunately, 67% of companies report dropout rates of over 10% post offer, which is actually quite a lot higher than many people may realize. So, you know, despite the reasonably large spend on onboarding, over 10% of people are still dropping out of this process which is a huge number of people and unnecessary cost to any business. I think skills-based hiring would obviously reduce this dropout as Lauren's been talking about to a certain extent, but by its very nature. But we need to be mindful of this [00:18:39] When thinking about how we're gonna onboard this, you know, this special group of people and treating them in the right way. So the final kind of stat I want to share is that the HR review says that the average cost to replace an employee earning 25,000 pounds or more is over 30,000 pounds. So again you could include lots of different things within this cost, but it does include things like lost output while a replacement employee gets up to speed and the logistical cost of recruiting and absorbing a new workload. So all of this data, [00:19:11] All the last three slides I've shared is telling us that, you know, we can't afford to lose quality skills-based candidates once they've been recruited. You know, lots of effort, as Lauren has mentioned, has gone into that skills-based hiring process. So we do need to invest in onboarding, but the onboarding needs to be done correctly. And this becomes even more important with these candidates as they'll be needing a lot more support and help during their transition to a new role or industry. [00:19:40] So on onto, you know, what we can do about this. So how can we onboard new people into, within a skills-based organization? Well, they might need extra technical training and knowledge as they won't have that experience. If we take our example earlier of Beth she will need office-based technical training, for example, perhaps management training or help with, you know, IT tools or software. [00:20:06] People might need extra support with logistics and navigating a new environment. Again, Beth, the teacher would be very familiar with a school or educational environment, but won't have worked in a corporate office before. The differences, as we all know, are huge. Culture and logistics need to be communicated in a way that won't make Beth feel anxious and just gets her ready for day one. [00:20:30] She may need extra connections help with mentoring before she joins to get her up to speed. She might not know anyone in this industry, and she'll surely have lots of questions about the role. So giving her a sense of belonging and a and maybe a buddy or a mentor she can ask questions of will be really crucial. [00:20:53] So, I thought it'd be useful to kind of go through some ways. We can create this engaging onboarding experience for skills-based hires and things we can do almost immediately. You know, I'm not saying you need to, you know, invest thousands of pounds right now. There are things we can actually take action on, you know, today. So here are five ways we could do this. The first one, providing learning and technical training that they might be lacking to prepare for day one. As Lauren says, we will know the skills someone has if we're doing [00:21:22] skills-based hiring properly. So we will know probably the learning that they're lacking in, or things that they need to bring themselves up to a really high standard. So we can, we can capitalize on that and help them through it. Provide personalized content that's tailored to the individual, which gives them information and tasks in a way that suits them. [00:21:42] Provide opportunities for them to connect with their peers, mentor and manager to ask questions. I think onboarding often is done with a kind of, we assume someone else is gonna be doing it. We assume the manager will do it. We assume that maybe someone might pick the phone and call them. But actually giving people roles and responsibilities and knowing who's doing what is really important and support for everyone involved. [00:22:04] I think the next one's a really important one, training managers on a skills-based approach and how to better onboard their staff. Again as Lauren's mentioned, there's, there's lots of change involved if you are thinking of becoming more of a skills-based organization. So helping managers along that process is really important. And not expecting them just to know what to do. You know, they have their day job, they have other things that they need to be doing. So supporting them and giving them help along that way is really important. And finally being able to monitor [00:22:35] And track wellness and engagement. Again, when we offer someone a job, we often think, oh, they'll be, they'll be happy they're starting a new job. We can leave them be for a few months. But what I think a lot of us on this call will know that's not true. You know, we have to know how they're feeling a lot of the time. We want to be able to track how engaged they are with your business so that we know you know, how likely they are actually to start on day one. 'cause that often is a problem for some businesses. [00:23:01] So I thought it'd be useful to delve into some of these things and actually kind of come up with some real examples. The first being personalized content and technical learning. And Lauren touched upon this earlier as well. So, tailored personalized content builds knowledge and understanding embeds culture and values and prepares people for work. Improving this early performance and reducing anxiety, which I've mentioned, and technical training. And pre-learning allows candidates, you know, coming from a completely different background or industry to really immerse themselves in this new environment before day one. As I mentioned, we know the skills someone has if we've [00:23:42] Been, if we're doing skills-based hiring properly, so we can help them develop where they're lacking as part of their onboarding. And this, as Lauren just mentioned, can really help with internal mobility later in their career as we'll. We'll know where their skills lie, we need them to move around the business. So, you know, giving you an opportunity to monitor and capture those skills and helping people to move around the business is really important. We work with NatWest group and they allow their new hires to get personalized information and content on their early career programs. [00:24:14] Their mentor, their buddy, their manager, as well as the exact location and office they're gonna be working in. These candidates, these new hires, they don't want generic information. They've had that from the career site. What they want is information that's gonna be tailored to give that best experience. You know, their new hires receive tasks relevant to their role and the individual as well. So they can even allow people to select how and when they receive this information, which is great for inclusivity especially for neurodiverse candidates in particular, which is really useful. [00:24:50] Delving into the next point which is around building connections. So, oh, have I shared Some slides? Hang on. There we go. They're back out now. [00:25:03] I think it's the one before here. Can you see me? Can you see it? Yeah. Cool. Yeah. So connections. People want to talk to people when they're joining. I think people have a lot more questions if they're hiring and coming into a new industry or environment. People want to be connected with their colleagues and managers, and we can do that in a really simple way. We don't necessarily have to have lots of technology. It might just be as simple as putting the right people in touch with each other, or starting up a buddy or mentor program. [00:25:33] We want to foster this sense of belonging that I've been talking about. So yeah, give them opportunity to ask these questions in an informal setting. You know, Beth, I'm sure would appreciate being given people to talk to, maybe a contact book of people that she could get in touch with, or maybe have a list of people that will call her to find out how she's doing and if she has any questions for them. Just reaching out to people can make a real world difference within the onboarding space. [00:26:02] So, onto the importance of managers. Now, this can't be underestimated. They are the most important person in my mind for a new hire. Someone they want to engage with before day one. But as I said, managers are busy people. They're often aren't experts in onboarding. So ensure your managers have that support and knowledge and reminders they need to deliver a skills-based hiring process and an engaging onboarding experience. So, you know, find some training and development that's relevant for the manager to give them so that they can provide their new hires with a better experience. [00:26:37] Things like a simple checklist. Again, you don't need technology for this, it's just, it's just a simple checklist, perhaps with some alerts. So, you know, to keep that manager on track really important. [00:26:54] Oh, yeah, that's the right next one. That's the right slide. So finally my final kind of tip is you really need to be able to monitor and track engagement and wellbeing. Again, this doesn't have to be complicated. A simple survey or onboarding rating could be enough from your new hires. It's just checking in with your people taking action when they're, when if they're disengaged or perhaps a bit unhappy. This will really help you to continue to improve your candidate experience. And in the example of Beth it would be super useful you know, if managers [00:27:30] And hr, our teams can know if she's maybe less engaged or unhappy or, you know, so maybe they could get in touch with her to check in before it's too late. And maybe she would jump outta the process. Maybe she thinks she's less relevant for the role. If there's a tool, any doubt in her mind that's when we start to lose candidates. So building this onboarding high touch experiences is super important. [00:27:57] So yes, just to summarize, those are the five ways essentially that I would say people can start to create a really engaging onboarding experience for skills-based hires. I dunno if we have any questions coming in Emmanuel through the chat, I'll have a check. [00:28:14] If you do have any questions, obviously just drop them in the chat and we can help you by asking them. I think we've lost Lauren, so I'm not sure the new system, oh, she's back again is working too well. [00:28:31] So if anyone's got any questions, then please type them into the chat. We'll be happy to help you. Am I back? You are back now. Hello? Sorry, it worked that perfectly. [00:28:46] Did it? I wasn't sure if it was lagging out for anybody else or whether everyone can hear, could hear Sarah. Okay. Whether it was, hopefully it was just on my end. Oh, Yeah, I didn't see any comments. Cool. If you could just let us know in the chat if it was all working. Okay. Luckily Sarah and I have gone through the presentation, so I'm up to date with the, with the content that was presented. So thank you so much, Sarah. No worries. [00:29:11] So if anybody would like some more information you can contact us both either via email via LinkedIn or you can scan the QR code to book some meetings with us. Basically AssessFirst we are a behavioral assessment provider. So as you maybe touched on or kind of got through the webinar we provide assessments to add into your interview processes. Also very useful post hire to identify those kind of top distinctive traits in your candidates. Where are their natural talents? And we can benchmark those against your jobs, basically. [00:29:51] So we can create models based on your existing team, you know, looking at actually what the top talents are within your organization, creating that as a benchmark so that you are hiring people in who have those same soft skills. We look at your job descriptions we have kind of manual ways we can do that as well. So really making sure we have those tailored cool, tailored okay. We have a couple of people saying that they couldn't hear brilliantly, but lots of people that could hear. Okay. And yeah, so to make these tailored benchmarks to mean [00:30:20] That actually when you're hiring, you're not just doing it based on, you know, what is making a software developer good industry-wide, you know, it's actually what is making a software developer a great hire figure, your team specifically. And this is where we really see those increases in engagement and motivation and retention. Because yeah, they feel, they feel seen they've been hired because they're a great fit for your team. So that's us in a nutshell. Anything you wanted to say about Eli and what you guys offer Sarah? Yeah, sure. And hopefully you can hear me okay. [00:30:52] We're recording this so, you know, we can share this after. So if there's anything that you missed, hopefully the recording will capture it all. But yes, as I said, Eli can essentially automate your onboarding process from the moment someone is offered the job all the way through to joining three, four months in. It creates personalized experiences for every one of your new hires and ensuring that everyone in your business gets an experience that's, that's tailored to them essentially. So yeah, essentially doing all the things we've just talked about in terms of giving candidates that high touch experience [00:31:33] That we really wanna get outta and doing this. But we've had, we've had a question. Yes, thanks Lisa. And just to kind of touch on your point there, Sarah the cool thing about hiring on skills-based hiring is not just knowing where a candidate is likely to excel, but also knowing what their development areas are. And one of the things I love most about our solution is that it kind of removes the stigma around not being perfect. You know, and this is a big enablement piece we do with managers to say, look, you're gonna hire the candidate [00:32:06] Who have the most potential to succeed, but that doesn't mean they're perfect. And lots of managers worry, you know, they're like, oh, it's gonna be more work for me. I'm gonna have more time taken up for onboarding, all that type of stuff. But actually, when they are educated on the benefits of skills-based hiring, and they're able to see, well, we're not gonna be spending, you know, 30 k per lever on absolutely on rehiring and retraining, you're gonna have more skilled staff who stay for longer. That is the benefit. It's just, yeah, absolutely. You have to make the right changes at the start [00:32:37] To see those benefits, you know, six to 12 months down the line. And that's what I like, you know, about kind of working with you guys, is we can help the, that process because we know where candidates, new hires maybe want to elevate that, you know, maybe they're an 85% fit, but you wanna bring them to a hundred percent. We can help them with that learning and training during the onboarding to get them to that, to that stage. And we talked about internal mobility several times today, and that's, that's another thing that Eli can help with. [00:33:04] You know, we work with organizations on employee experience. It doesn't have to just be the new hire coming into a business. It could be a new hire moving around a business because they need support and hand holding as well. Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Lisa, thanks for the question. As you can imagine, this is a key priority for us to not just visit, but continue revisiting as technology continues to grow at a crazy speed. So we have three assessments. We look at personality, motivations and decision making. The whole of the assessment is what we call chat, GBT proof [00:33:40] Because particularly for personality and motivation, there's no, there's no necessarily right answer. You know, it's all dependent on this organization and the benchmark model that you're using to compare your candidates against the candidate has no way of knowing what they are being assessed against. They don't know whether you want someone who has particular high attention to detail or whether you want someone who's more of a big picture thinker. Do you want an optimist? Do you want a pragmatist, for example? But beyond that as well we test each trait that we're examining up to eight or nine times. [00:34:14] So we're really looking for consistency ultimately in responses. And that is something that, you know, the crux of someone's personality comes through those answers. If we were to get someone's results at the end and the candidate goes, well, I don't see myself in these, we have ways of being able to identify which facets maybe, they took longer to answer, which maybe suggests that it wasn't so much of a natural response for them. But they, yeah, it's not something that can be, can be answered with artificial intelligence. Our third assessment, [00:34:46] Which is looking at cognitive ability also can't be, can't be responded to in a way that can utilize something like chat GBT because it's pattern recognition. You can't, you know, copy and paste the answers and put them into chat GBT. It's, it's, it's something that you know, physically have to kind of click and drag and move and move symbols around a screen. So yeah, that's kind of how we have managed to stay away from artificial intelligence being able to complete the assessments up until this point. But as mentioned, it's a constant area that we're, [00:35:19] We're reexamining and making sure that we stay ahead of the curve ultimately. Has anybody else got any questions? I was just taking down a couple of notes actually, when you were chatting Sarah. Hmm. And I think when it comes to the onboarding, the same as what we were talking about with the skills map, that you're doing for skills-based hiring, I would imagine it's also important to look at the skills map at the start of onboarding, but from that very like pragmatic sense, you know, so what does this person in order to reach their probation, [00:35:53] For example, what do they need to actually be able to do? You know, because most people, they have a ramp phase, right? They're not expected. Even if they've got a ton of experience behind them, they're not expected to launch into a position Absolutely. And be working at a hundred percent straight away. So you can kind of structure this to say, cool, what does month one need to cover? What does month two need to cover? What does month three need to cover to make sure that actually they are meeting the expectations of the role, but incrementally to avoid this kind of overwhelm, [00:36:19] Both on the behalf of the manager, but also on behalf of the employee as well. Mm-hmm. And then actually starting, oh God, have I, have I gone again? I'm back. I can, I can hear you. I just can't see you. Honestly, we have like extremely good internet at home, so I dunno what all this is happening for. So yeah, actually setting out what does this person need to be capable of doing now and then in six months time, et cetera, Et cetera. And that's, that's not just important for their performance. It's actually, I think as you mentioned, it's important [00:36:48] For their you know, them getting excited about their role and their enjoyment of the role because we all like to be challenged in a good way. Yeah. And so if you're being given tasks that get you interested and get you ready for doing it, and you're not sitting there twiddling your thumbs and thinking, what should I be doing? Or, you know, should I be going to meet this person? Should I be going, should I be reading this doc, you know, document? Mm-hmm. Should I be talking this video? If it's set out in front of you that worry, [00:37:14] That anxiety just goes yeah. And you're starting to develop and learn things and then people want to learn things out of a new role, that's, that's, mm-hmm. That's a big part of what drives people, so, Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And I liked the piece about the engagement levels too specifically for skills-based hires, you know, we wanna make sure that they feel supported, they've been given the confidence to know, well, you are exactly the type of person that is successful in this business. And I think that's the really crucial thing to get right. You know, it's, it's obviously gonna be trepidatious [00:37:47] For businesses making this leap. And it is, it's, it's a leap of faith at the start to go, yes, we are gonna trust that we're gonna accurately under identify the skills required in this team, and we're gonna hire the people who have those skills. And that's why, without choosing our own horn, something that can help kind of give you that confidence by using an objective data tools such as AssessFirst can help with that. Mm-hmm. But once you've then got that data, you've then gotta support that candidate to actually feel that the confidence is exactly continuing from their side. [00:38:17] Yeah. Because it's, it's that imposter syndrome, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. That phrase. Yeah. But we talk about it a lot. It's, you know, yeah. Hold on a minute. You know, thinking about Beth, I'm imaginary teacher. Mm-hmm. She's coming in, she's thinking I'm a tea, you know, she was an amazing teacher, but, you know, she's kind gonna, she's gonna be doubting herself and she's gonna be coming into an environment where people, other people have been working there for years. So giving them the confidence that actually your skills are actually probably higher than most people you're gonna be working with. [00:38:42] Exactly. Yeah. Maybe you can, giving them an opportunity to share with their people some of the things that she's learned in the teaching profession, because, you know, teams need fresh talent. They need to be, this is one of the brilliant things about skills-based hiring, you know, you're bringing fresh talent and views into the organization. So giving her an opportunity within her onboarding to share her knowledge and her skills that might be different to some of her teams, I think is really important. I'll make her feel valued to. Yeah. And that's the thing, A, [00:39:14] A new hire hired on skills doesn't have to feel imposter syndrome. Yeah. If they do, it's a product of the environment they've been placed in that's not supported them well enough. And I can speak from experience due to the changes that I've had with my role at AssessFirst, actually when I made them move over to being involved in training our clients and enabling them to utilize our features and creating competency frameworks and creating predictive models. I was given so much confidence by my peers internally to say, wow, you have so much value to bring [00:39:42] To this position because you know these TA leaders better than we do because you were one. And that really kind of gave me this sense of empowerment to say, great, as you say, I can bring like a fresh new perspective to these processes, like what's most beneficial for me. And if we take Beth as that example as well, if, you know, maybe even during the onboarding, you utilize that skills map and say, cool, well, your skills of stakeholder management are gonna be relevant to X, Y, and Z project or X, y, and Z task. So she goes into that going, cool, I have already done this. [00:40:13] We're just giving it a different name now. And that's the way I think to really solidify that sense of belonging, that psychological safety within an organization, putting these little things in place and enabling managers, I think is so crucial. You know, making sure that they feel confident and trust the ability of the people that they're hiring. And I think this is where onboarding really comes into its own. It's making sure that, as we said, like onboarding isn't actually the sole responsibility of management. You know, this should be something that is very set in place that the manager knows [00:40:46] What they're responsible for, but also you've got, you know, your people in l and d, your people in training your TA teams, your people teams, your HR teams, all working on making sure that these new starters have the very best chance to succeed and to reach that potential. Yeah. Working together not assuming other people are doing things everyone know in their role. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. [00:41:08] Has anybody got any questions? I'm surprised. I thought we'd have loads and loads and Loads of questions. I think we just, we've answered all the problems. I think that's, that's a good way to end. [00:41:19] But we appreciate, like, it's, it's, it is a very new topic. We're gonna, I think carry on well, we are gonna carry on doing lots of information about skills-based hiring across the course of the year. We will send out in our emails the skills-based hiring brochure that we've actually just created, which goes into lots and lots of detail similar to what we've covered today. And yeah, please do lean on us if you have any questions. We're both happy to kind of answer your questions as well. And yeah, kind of bring you guys around [00:41:49] To the skills-based hiring revolution if you're not already on board. Cool. Have we got the last poll finally to pop up just in case. [00:42:03] Perfect. So yeah, do let us know if you are interested in getting some more information from either AssessFirst or Eli. As I say, we can talk you through actually how skills-based hiring can be implemented into your specific organization. Looking at the projects that you have coming up in 2025, and kind of support you on that journey as well. And also, you know, let you know which clients which competitors of yours, which other businesses within your sector have already made this change, how it's actually playing out for them. You know, it's really important that you, [00:42:37] You are able to have that inside knowledge as well. So.