One of the most important jobs of the human resources department is to ensure that they hire the best talent. However, with the massive technological change, employees must constantly upskill themselves or choose a new career path to stay relevant. A study by the World Economic Forum titled ‘The Future of Jobs’ found that 65 percent of children currently in primary school will end up working in jobs that do not even exist now.
This leads to a skill gap in companies, which is now one of the challenges facing companies as they not only try to recruit the best employees but also prepare them to adapt to future challenges. Companies now conduct a skill gap analysis to look for areas where their employees can improve. But what is skill gap analysis?
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What is Skill Gap Analysis
Skill Gap Analysis is just analyzing the difference between the actual skills the employees have and the skills they would need to have in the future. A skill gap analysis does not often get you close to accurate results. Still, it does give a very good idea about the inefficiencies of the employees, allowing them to improve their skills. Companies also conduct a skill gap analysis to identify the trends of a specific industry.
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How to conduct a skill gap analysis
Define objectives
First, companies must realize that skill gap analysis can be conducted for various reasons. These could range from meeting business goals, adapting to technological changes, and improving team performance. So, after the objectives have been set, the companies need to move to the next stage, i.e., defining the scope of this skill gap analysis. Depending on the company’s resources and goals, the scope could be team-specific or across the entire organization.
The chances of success of a skill analysis test depend mostly on whether the objectives are clearly defined and align with the company’s needs. For example, a company needing to train on a new Customer Relationship Management(CRM) tool may require only the employees who work as product managers or handle clients to be trained on the tool.
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Identify Key Skills and Competencies
Companies looking to conduct skill gap analysis first need to create a list of skills that need to be immediately learned. Then, the employees need to be recognized and trained in their skills. Companies need to factor in factors such as trends, technology, and industry changes that may require employees to upskill themselves.
A great way to increase the efficiency of a skill gap analysis test is to determine some benchmarks and parameters. This allows the human resources team to identify how much skill gap each employee actually has. Companies can also refer to industry standards or frameworks to get a comparison with other companies that may be conducting skill analysis gap tests.
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Assess Current Skills
Before the start of the skill gap analysis test, companies need to assess their employees’ current skills, which will be the benchmark for evaluating their improvement when they upskill. The first step should be to allow candidates to self-assess their skills against predefined benchmarks. Online tools such as Google Forms and SurveyMonkey are great ways to conduct surveys, especially in large multinational corporations (MNCs).
To simplify the process, companies can ask the candidates to rate themselves on a scale (1 to 10). The data collected should be analyzed in two ways: managerial and peer levels, allowing for a thorough inspection. Companies can use tools like HackerRank, CodeSignal, or LinkedIn Skill Assessments to analyze skill gaps.
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Identify the Gaps
The main aim of a skill analysis test is to identify gaps between the skills present and the skills required. This is why companies should often compare the employee’s skills and goals and objectives they need to achieve to fill the gaps. There are three types of gaps: knowledge, skills, and behavioral.
Companies should focus on the lack of knowledge and information in knowledge gaps. In skills gaps, the focus is more on the lack of expertise and practical experience for the job. Behavioral gaps, meanwhile, focus on soft skills that are not core to the employees. This includes traits such as leadership, teamwork, and collaboration.
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Develop and Execute an Action Plan
Now that the skills and goals have been identified, companies should draw out an execution action plan. The first step is to conduct training programs offline (workshops, seminars) or online (courses, mentorships, or certifications). After the gap has been identified, companies usually have two choices: either hire new skills or invest time in employees to upskill or reskill themselves. In the latter case, companies can use shadow opportunities to provide some form of on-the-job training and personal one-to-one coaching.
Recruiters must remember that every candidate could experience a skills gap in their career. So, it is important to identify the people who can acknowledge their shortcomings and work on them during hiring. This is where an impeccable recruitment strategy can greatly improve the workplace’s efficiency.
So, why not use Artificial Intelligence to step up your hiring game? This is where we bring you BarRaiser, your one-stop for turning your interviews into smart interviews. With BarRaiser, recruiters get a tool that can provide them with end-to-end hiring solutions.
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It all starts with our Ai interview copilot, which acts as your virtual assistant throughout the entire process. So, before the interview, our AI integrates a chatbot into the company’s Application Tracker System. The recruiter can simply ask our AI tool to create a questionnaire based on the role for which the candidate is being hired. A sample of this would look something like this:
- Create me a questionnaire for a product manager with five years of experience. The interview should be 60 minutes long and consist of five equal parts: introduction, career up to now, technical knowledge, future expectations, and any special requests.
After this is done, our chatbot gives guidance to recruiters during the interview. This includes warnings, new questions, and alerts if the interview time is being exceeded. Our tool uses a Structured interview format that asks every candidate the same questions to maintain unbiasedness during the interview process.
Also post interview our AI bot asks the interviewer to rate the candidates on over 45 metrics. We follow this process because we believe that the decision making process should be in the hand of a human and our tool should act as an assistant which is why we describe our tool as an interview assistant.
Experience top-tier interview quality with us
Using BarRaiser we guarantee you Quality hiring that will also bolster Diversity and inclusion. BarRaiser is the best AI Interview platform that features Structured interviews, AI-generated interview notes, and tools to ensure quality hiring while eliminating biases from the recruitment process. With BarRaiser’s support, you’ll be well-equipped to build a strong team of sales associates who will drive sales and deliver exceptional customer service.