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In this episode of Work in Progress, SHRM president & CEO Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., joins me to discuss the movement toward skills-based hiring, how hiring managers and employers are navigating this shift, and what job seekers can do to increase their chances of getting hired.

In my conversation with Taylor, we discuss how employers and hiring managers can better signal the skills they are looking for in a particular job and how job seekers can better tell the story of the skills that they have that match the employer’s needs.

“There’s a paradigm shift, to your point, from the resume and the degree being a proxy for smart and capable and having the skills. We’re in the middle of a level of transition that we’ve never seen in such a short period of time, in the workforce. Hiring managers are trying to keep up with it,” says Taylor.

“We are relying very heavily on feedback from the customer, and the customer would be people who are actually interviewing for a job. I want to know who’s showing up. What’s the language? How are they describing themselves and their skills and qualities and characteristics?” he adds.

Taylor says many of the questions during the job interview are now about what the job seeker is technically capable of doing.

“I’m looking for someone to tell me what they’ve done, when they’ve done it, what were the results. You’ve got to leave that interview making me know that, when I hire you to be a technical writer, that you can actually write. I don’t care about what school you attended. I don’t care about your degrees, at all. Can you do what I’m hiring you to do?

“The most important thing you’ve got to do is to become a storyteller, even if you’re not great at it. Storytelling is going to get you the job,” Taylor tells me.

The conversation also touched on many other subjects, including the importance of credentials, older workers, and diversity and inclusion.

You can listen to the full conversation here or download Work in Progress wherever you get your podcasts.

Episode 235: Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM president & CEO
Host & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Executive Producers: Joan Lynch and Melissa Panzer
Theme Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4.0
Download the transcript for this podcast here.
You can check out all the other podcasts at this link: Work in Progress podcasts