Why a Candidate’s Potential, Not Their Experience, Holds the Key to Long-Term Business Success

By Jonathan Evans, founder and CEO of Discovery

The recruitment and training sector in 2024 is underpinned by an inconvenient but unavoidable truth. With the market so saturated and disparate, many recruitment practices can no longer best serve the interest of organisations, nor help them to accurately address the challenges of a modern, increasingly globalised business landscape. Indeed, despite the plethora of recruiters, 87% of companies are struggling to fill job openings, according to figures from Hiring People.

It’s clear that, if they are to plug the skills gaps that they’re experiencing, businesses must make a fundamental shift in their approach to recruitment processes. No longer can firms focus on attracting candidates who the market perceives to be ‘the best talent’ on offer; now, they must devote their efforts to appealing to those who would be the best talent for their own organisation. This not only requires employers to recognise the kind of candidates they need to drive business success right now, but also to consider the sort of talent they will likely need to take on for addressing future challenges.

Potential > Experience

However, planning for the future is easier said than done. A report from Dell Technologies suggests that a huge 85% of the jobs that will exist in 2030 haven’t actually been created yet, highlighting just how crucial it is for businesses to take a long-term approach to their hiring, not only assessing a candidate’s suitability for the job in question, but also their level of potential to fulfil future roles as required.

Attempts to make such assessments are, however, compounded greatly by existing recruitment processes, which place far too much emphasis on a person’s skills and experience, and not nearly enough on their compatibility with a company’s culture, values and goals. For example, a graduate market report produced by High Fliers Research shows that over a third of the UK’s top employers believe that, regardless of a graduate’s academic results or the university they attended, it is ‘not very likely’ or ‘not likely at all’ that they will secure a job at their firm if they have no experience.

This demonstrates the shortsighted approach that many businesses are taking towards recruitment, placing their focus on the past instead of the future. After all, a candidate could have all the experience in the world, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will be the right fit for an organisation’s long-term goals. In fact, it could be the graduate who’s completely new to the world of work who possesses the skills and behaviours that a company needs to drive its growth.

What change is needed?

If they hope to tackle the challenges that lie ahead, businesses need to change their perception of candidates and their experience. To effectively facilitate this, CVs should only be used as a point of reference rather than as a decision maker. After all, you can’t hope to get an accurate view of a person’s potential from a piece of paper. Employers need to get candidates in front of them so that they can gain a proper understanding of who they are, and what they can bring to their organisation.

By taking this approach and prioritising a candidate’s potential and experience, employers can unlock the benefits of doing so. For example, not only does hiring for potential open up a much broader talent pool – taking into account the many people who they might not otherwise have considered in experienced-based assessments – it also increases company innovation, bringing fresh perspectives and ideas to the organisation that are unburdened by past experience or outdated ways of thinking.

However, business leaders must first take time to build a benchmark for what skills and behaviours they expect from their staff, taking in to account the ‘relative pace’ of the organisation. This is the only way that they can accurately and consistently measure candidates in line with their overall business strategy, values, and cultures. Not only will having more employees who are better aligned with their business help employers to boost productivity, it will also aid in staff retention, and support them in building a strong succession plan to address the organisation’s evolving needs.

At the end of the day, the past is the past, and what has been can’t be changed. Businesses can only control what’s to come, and as such this is where their focus should be when it comes to recruitment.