Managing Skills Mismatches at Your Firm

Managing Skills Mismatches at Your Firm
Look beyond the job description ‘silo.’

If you’re like managers in many other organizations, you’ve had to thin the ranks of your finance team during the recession. Now you may be considering adding staff to ensure you have the right mix of skills to help you take advantage of opportunities that emerge as conditions improve. But despite historically high unemployment levels today, hiring the right new employees is not as easy as it may seem.

This is largely because companies’ expectations are high when they hire. They want professionals who possess an ideal combination of skills and experience and who are a fit with the prevailing workplace culture. Fully half of chief executive officers interviewed for the latest Robert Half Financial Hiring Index said locating highly skilled candidates is a challenge.
Companies can best address staffing issues by taking a bigger picture view of their needs. No manager has a crystal ball, but based on current activity levels and a reasonable forecast of the future, what do you anticipate your firm’s or department’s workload to be? This step will help you decide which type of employee is required – full-time, part-time or temporary.

In some cases, you may not need to hire at all. Often firms overlook talent within their own organizations because of an existing skills mismatch. Before you start your candidate search, take a hard look at what skills your current team can deliver. A thorough assessment of your staff’s abilities will help you identify true skills gaps (needs that you must fill with outside resources) as well as skills “mismatches” (needs you can address by adjusting the responsibilities of existing team members). This insight will allow you to hire strategically while ensuring you also are making the best use of talent already in place.

A skills mismatch does not always mean an employee is serving in the wrong role at your firm; it can also exist when his range of talents is not being fully utilized. Management’s tendency to define a staff member’s abilities by what is outlined in a job description often leads to a skills mismatch. While you may have used this criteria to hire an employee, and probably have relied on it since to measure her performance, it is important to look beyond the job description “silo.”
Here’s why: During the downturn, you likely asked your team – particularly, your most capable employees – to assume additional or different responsibilities, and perhaps, cover for various positions left open due to cutbacks. This intense and prolonged “on-the-job training” required many of your employees to stretch their abilities beyond the confines of their pre-recession job responsibilities. Moving forward, you should leverage any talented staff member’s expanded skill set to the fullest in order to create benefits for the firm.

Consider former professional football player William “The Refrigerator” Perry, who was drafted by the Chicago Bears in the mid-1980s as a defensive lineman. He excelled in his role, but coach Mike Ditka soon recognized that Perry had potential to play well offensively, too – a rare combination. Ditka used Perry as a fullback in many critical goal-line plays – including a rushing touchdown in Super Bowl XX that helped seal the Bears’ victory over the New England Patriots.
By adjusting or expanding the responsibilities of the most productive workers on your team, you may find they will flourish in entirely different ways that not only make them feel valued but also create real benefits for the firm.

Of course, tapping internal talent won’t address every skills need you have and you’ll need to make strategic hires if business demands continue to grow. But working with your existing team to find ways to help them develop in new areas makes for more versatile employees and also gives them greater satisfaction as they assist in meeting the business’s changing needs.

This article is provided courtesy of Robert Half International, parent company of Accountemps, Robert Half Finance & Accounting and Robert Half Management Resources. Robert Half is the world’s first and largest specialized staffing firm placing accounting and finance professionals on a temporary, full-time and project basis. Follow Robert Half on Twitter at twitter.com/roberthalf