Ep 620: Hard Skills & Soft Skills

Recruiting Future with Matt Alder

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The shortening shelf life of skills, shifting business priorities, and the surge in AI-driven job applications are compelling many employers to rethink their candidate assessment and selection processes. This shift towards skills-based thinking is fostering greater integration between talent acquisition and talent management. By combining data on soft skills, hard skills, and career aspirations, employers can leverage a unified dataset to gain a comprehensive view throughout the entire employee lifecycle.

So how can this be done, and what advantages can it bring?

My guest this week is Jason Putnam, the CRO at Plum. Jason has been driving the charge around the scientific assessment of soft skills for a while and has recently incorporated data on hard skills into their methodology. Jason has some important insights to share on the future of assessment and the implementation of skills-based hiring.

In the interview, we discuss:

• How the market is evolving

• The changing balance between talent acquisition and talent management

• TA's responsibility for retention

• Combining hard skills and soft skills

• Pace paradox versus business latency

• Focusing on the skills you need rather than the skills you have

• The evolution of the recruiting process

• Building alignment between talent acquisition, talent management, and hiring managers

• The importance of one universal dataset

• The role of AI

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