No-one really knows what the future holds and as the new (virtual) campus season begins what does this mean for an organisation who are looking for tomorrow’s talent?
Is it even possible to identify people who can support your business in the future world of work? We believe it is. When tomorrow looks so different from yesterday, past experience is no longer the only effective predictor future success.
Its, however, possible to assess for potential, and applicants with high potential will, by definition, be able to succeed whatever tomorrow brings – they’re people who can apply their learnings from one situation to another, are resilient, can adapt quickly to changing circumstances, who can be creative in their thinking and get the best out of both systems and people.
Historically the focus has been on past-experience, with potential being a secondary consideration. We would recommend that to hire future-proof talent, organisations should switch the focus and hire for potential first, and experience second.
Now clearly, we’re not suggesting that someone should be hired into a highly technical role who doesn’t have the necessary skills and has never done work of a similar nature before. We are, however, suggesting that if candidate A has done every element of the role before, but scores low on potential, but candidate B has experience of key (but not all) elements of the role and scores highly on potential, candidate B should be chosen: someone who has high potential will rapidly close their skill/capability gaps and will additionally be capable of further adapting to the future needs of the role and business.
We’re also suggesting that the assessment order should change: rather than ensuring shortlisted applicants all have the relevant experience and then choosing either the most experienced, or the one with the most potential, organisations should first ensure that all shortlisted candidates are high on potential and then choose either the one with the greatest potential (for leadership roles) or the one with the most relevant skills (for more technical roles).
Assessing for potential has been considered difficult in the past, but Amberjack has spent many years developing and evolving a High Potential (HiPo) model and the necessary assessment tools and techniques which make it easily achievable, even in high-volume situations. There are 4 key elements to our model:
Digital Mindset: There is no question that the future will be increasingly automated. People with potential aren’t necessarily technicians themselves, but they do embrace technology, think creatively with technology, have a natural inclination towards and understanding of technology, and are drawn to technical solutions, automation and digitalisation.
Applied Intellect: In our Google-enabled world, knowledge is less important than the application of knowledge. EQ is as important as IQ and learning agility, self-awareness, and a hunger for continual self-improvement is critical.
Creative Force: Computers/robots are best suited to logic-driven, linear tasks or tasks that are traditionally ‘left-brain’ tasks. The value that humans will continue to add over-and-above computers will come from ‘right-brain’ holistic and creative thinking. Those with potential have an entrepreneurial mindset and the confidence to implement new ideas and solutions.
Grit: When change is a constant, the people who will thrive will be those who are resilient in the face of that change, are able to adapt, are tenacious in their commitment to achieving their goals and thrive on challenge and continual evolution.
For organisations interested in assessing against these capabilities in an efficient and highly effective manner, our latest innovative product, HiPo-i is an automated assessment tool which assesses against all four pillars of our HiPo model in a highly engaging, interactive manner. It’s also been designed with diversity, disability, and neurodiversity in mind from the outset.
In addition, we can provide guidance on how all these hard-to-assess but critical criteria can be evaluated using interventions from interviews to job simulations and defamiliarisation exercises.
No-one knows what the future holds, let’s explore what it could be. For more information or to book a demo of HiPo-i click here.
