Job descriptions and skill lists help employers identify the best candidates for each role. However, people come with a range of skills, experience and natural talents – some of which might be under-utilised in their current position. That creates great opportunities for you to fill roles from within your organisation and explains why job descriptions should never be rigid.
But how do you uncover hidden skills, experience and natural talents?
Step 1: Create a job description for the new role along with a list of desirable skills and attributes.
Step 2: Look at your current staff to see if there are any matches. This includes looking at their behaviours while at work, as well as their job responsibilities. For example, do you have a staff member who others turn to for information or assistance? They could become great trainers or team leaders.
Step 3: Review past CVs and your staff’s LinkedIn profiles. These sources will help you uncover any skills or experience they used in past roles that are now useful in your business.
Step 4: Don’t overlook the value of casual conversations with staff. It could be their hobbies or interests that reveal skills you are currently struggling to find in an external hire.
Remember: Never overload a staff member by adding new responsibilities to an already heavy workload. This will lead to burnout, job dissatisfaction and probably, another vacancy to fill.
Instead, your focus should be on redesigning workflows and job responsibilities to tap into your existing talent pool so you can better resource your organisation.
Why revise job descriptions to fit your current talent pool?
Within an organisation, desirable skillsets change, while over time, staff acquire more skills and abilities. So job descriptions should be reviewed and adapted on a regular basis to ensure you aren’t under-utilising your best people.
In addition, there are 6 more reasons why you should look at filling new positions from within. They are:
1. If your top people don’t feel valued or challenged, they may be searching for new roles. By reviewing their job descriptions and introducing new (or different) responsibilities, you are satisfying their need for personal development and change.
2. Promoting from within reduces training time because your current staff already know about your products or services and how your systems operate. Plus, you know they are a great cultural fit for your organisation.
3. Recognising a staff member’s strengths is flattering and rewarding. It also provides an incentive for other staff to work hard in the knowledge their efforts will also be recognised.
4. Giving staff the opportunity to expand their skillset builds a more resilient and flexible workforce.
5. Promoting from within may give you an opportunity to hire less experienced staff where the talent pool may be larger.
6. Making the most of your current staff’s skills and talents can remove the need to recruit and train new people.
Are you making the most of every staff members’ skillset?
While tapping into the unused talents of your staff may sound tempting, the practicalities can be difficult to fit into an already stretched work week. But that’s where the team at End2end Business Solutions can help you.
As your outsourced HR consultants, we can review current job descriptions and responsibilities for each member of staff. Then we will compare that with their current duties, natural talents and their past work experience.
This process will help you optimise your workforce and could uncover untapped skills your business has been desperately searching for in an external candidate. But if we discover you need to recruit someone new, we can assist you with that as well.
To learn more about the way we work, contact End2end Business Solutions 02 8977 4002.