Jobs are hard to fill at the time of this writing and companies are going to extreme measures to hire employees. A trucking company in Oregon was offering a $30,000 signing bonus for truck driver hires. Other companies like Walmart and Amazon were offering to pay college tuition fees for their employees. Not all companies can compete with these types of incentives especially small medium size companies.

Time to shift the hiring approach to focus on training candidates rather than hiring for skills. This is not possible for all jobs of course but it can for those that do not require higher education and years of experience such as engineering and programming.

The fast food has been doing this for years especially McDonalds’ who is famous for providing great training for students that for many was their first job.

Hire for Learning Potential

When screening resumes, we normally look for the knowledge and skills that are required for the job. But when that talent is in short supply look for people that can be trained for the job.

Hire for Attitude and Personality

Attitude towards work and having the right personality traits for the job are always important and even more so when you are hiring people who you plan to train and have them develop the skills for the job.

Hire for Interests

When someone is highly interested in the tasks of the job, they will want to learn what is required so they can perform well.

The above three criteria, learning ability, attitude and personality, and interests are best determined in people using assessments. Along with resume information, references and interviews, assessments provide a more complete and objective view of the person. I use two assessments with my clients. The Step One Survey delves into the candidate’s past and provides a perspective on their work attitude, such as work ethic.

The PXT Select assessment measures thinking style, behavioural traits, and work interests. The candidates scores are matched to a performance model specific to the job. This type of psychometric assessment is known as a total person assessment.

As technology continues to transform the workplace through automation that replaces many manual labor and repetitive jobs, companies need to consider hiring people they can train for the job rather than searching for skills that may not even exist. This is like retooling the workforce and because these changes are coming so fast, companies that want to survive and thrive in the future will need to find people that are ready to embrace change and learn the skills that will bring them new employment opportunities.