Most companies place more focus on experience during recruitment, but experienced candidates aren’t always available… As a result, recruitment has become more and more difficult for employers today, and so has employee retention!
Moreover, employers are often faced with a shortage of candidates with sought-after experience. Add to that, hiring for experience hasn’t always guaranteed neither performance nor that those hires will stick around for a long period!
When hiring, rather than focusing on skills and experience, it may be time to give a chance to candidates who have the potential to grow into exceptional employees.
Hiring for potential over experience allows you to evaluate a candidate's attitude and how well they'll fit into your company.
In this article, we’ll highlight some of the reasons why you should hire for potential and how to go about it. Let’s begin!
Why you should hire for potential not experience
Hiring experienced candidates doesn’t guarantee performance, nor does it guarantee that the candidate will stay for the long haul!
Rather than making work experience the deciding factor in your hiring process, your company may benefit more from considering candidates' potential.
Here are some of the reasons why hiring for potential will do your company more good than hiring for the experience:
It Improves employee retention
Hiring based on potential can significantly boost your company's employee retention rate.
When you hire employees based on their potential rather than experience, you enhance the likelihood that they will remain loyal to your firm in the long run. You offered them a chance and a sense of belongingness. So, they’ll most likely want to stay where they felt valued!
Such talent enters your business with the intention of learning and impressing you. As a matter of fact, a study in this regard shows that this enthusiasm can be leveraged to increase your company’s employee retention.
In a nutshell, provide talents with professional development opportunities and they will continue to grow in your company faster than you could imagine!
Experience doesn’t guarantee performance
Hiring a candidate based on experience can turn out to be a performance-ineffective decision.
The fact that a candidate has a lot of experience does not guarantee that he will provide you with the greatest performance. The years of experience a candidate has could be years without personal growth or any significant change. After doing the same job or working in the same business for a long time, an employee might easily become stagnant and caught in a rut.
Hiring talent with significant potential, on the other hand, can offer new ideas to your firm. They are highly motivated, curious, and eager to learn when they join your organization.
Adaptability
Candidates who lack the necessary experience but have strong potential tend to adapt to change better. They don't have to change their pre-existing ideas or preferences because… they are yet to get ones! They still lack formal experience and hindsight.
Candidates with a lot of experience, on the other hand, may come with a lot of baggage. They may be unwilling or at least unenthusiastic to change their ways of doing things. They also may have an attitude that prevents them from being flexible and adaptable to your work environment.
Some may not even take constructive criticism well!
It is cost-effective
With the intense competition in the job market and the shortage of candidates with the needed experience, hiring for experience has become quite expensive. The time and resources needed to source experienced candidates aren’t always available.
The longer your job ad is up when you're looking for someone with a specific level of experience, the more money you'll spend. Ideal experienced candidates are already committing to a job, and when they’re courted, they demand top-euros wage packages!
Recruiting for potential is less expensive & time-effective compared to hiring for the experience. Candidates with high potential but insufficient experience always seek to improve their credentials. As a result, they will accept lower-paying jobs to build their experience.
How to hire based on potential
Hiring on the basis of a candidate's potential is unquestionably riskier. However, the long-term benefits are enormous, which is what motivates businesses to support this!
Hiring for experience comes with difficulty and uncertainty. But you can get in on this hunt for potential & give it a try.
Here are some of the steps you can take to consider the potential in your next recruitment phase.
Focus on soft skills
Unlike hard skills (experience and technical skills), soft skills define who a candidate is. They demonstrate how well a candidate would communicate, interact, and contribute to the culture of your company.
Whether a candidate has 30 years of experience or none at all, if their personality does not match the culture of your company, it will never work!
So, when screening candidates, consider their soft skills and how well they’ll fit into your company’s culture.
Use aptitude tests
Aptitude exams and online assessments are two methods for determining a candidate's potential. They can help you gain a better grasp of each applicant's personality and potential for success in a specific role.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (or MBTI) or the Enneagram assessment are some popular options that provide a lot of insight into what makes a person tick.
Ask behavior-related questions
Another way to assess a candidate’s potential is to ask behavior-related questions during the interview.
Hypothetical and behavior-related questions are a good way to analyze a candidate’s potential. You can assess how they'll handle adversity and their general attitude. It can also reveal how well they’ll cope with the role and grow within your company.
Wrapping up
Strictly hiring for experience can cause you to miss the opportunity to hire someone who will put so much energy into the company. It may even offer you stability and assurance.
But potential can also be useful in the longer term! It can pump fresh energy, newer visions, and vaster insights into your company. Candidates with great potential can be trained to cope with the demands of the job and can also become loyal to you for taking a chance on them.
How and who you hire boils down to the demands of the job. Whether a candidate has the experience or not, if he shows good potential, then it's worth giving him a shot.