Exploring Transferrable Skills Within a Hiring Strategy

Exploring Transferrable Skills Within a Hiring Strategy

In a competitive labour market, the value of transferrable skills is often overlooked. We spoke with Technology Advisor, Dennis Kuzmar, to learn more about how transferrable skills can factor into a hiring strategy, and how organizations can hire balanced tech teams amidst a skills shortage.

You describe yourself as a ‘people first technology leader”, interested in ‘the human factors often overlooked in software development’. What do you mean by that?

It’s how I think about hiring in a competitive market. First and foremost, I’m looking for individuals who align with core organizational values and guiding principles, and how we as a team achieve our goals. I put the majority of my energy into looking for that behavioural aspect and finding the right person. Tech skills are important, but when you’re working in this field, you know that most engineers are always on a journey of learning, that they get excited at a chance to learn a new skill. When team members can support each other with balanced strengths, the whole team levels up.

That’s an astute approach to tech team design. How have you created that balance of strengths amidst this current industry skills shortage?

I focus my hiring searches on people who aren’t necessarily hyper focused in one skill, but have full stack, full lifecycle developer experience and can learn and grow in new areas. In building an intentional team, I look for complementary skills that enable the whole team to work together and deliver work that leverages everyone’s strengths.When you segment roles and create groups of high-density skills in isolation, it makes it harder for everything to flow. Projects are likely to be error prone, context is lost in translation, and progress is slower. A siloed team can’t be nimble and adapt quickly. Of course, some specialties may require a deep level of focus. But generally, I find that a wider complement of skills is more successful and more agile.Typically, I’m hiring at the intermediate or senior level, and not usually looking for workers who are fresh out of school. Hiring less experienced workers can definitely be a good route, but it is an investment and a long-term strategy, and you need to be aware of the extra time it will take to grow. If you’re trying to move quickly in the short-term, it will be more successful to go with intermediate or senior hires.

How can employers factor transferrable skills into their hiring strategy? What are the most important things to look for?

I approach hiring by giving priority and weighting to three considerations: attitude, aptitude, and ability. Attitude is the most important – it’s how they fit into the team and align with our values. Aptitude is the second most important; their ability to learn. They may not have each desirable skill checked off, but if they can demonstrate a capacity and hunger to learn, then we know they’ll be able to acquire any skills that are lacking. Finally, ability is the core skills someone brings that are aligned to how our team operates. Ability is last, because with strong attitude and aptitude, missing skills can easily be bridged.

What do those adaptable technology skills look like specifically?

As one example, say you’re looking for someone with experience building and running workflows out of AWS. If you find someone with a little experience, but who has worked professionally primarily with GCP or Azure, that’s close enough. They’ll understand the concepts of virtualization and containers, cloud storage, and how things need to be secured in that environment. I’d be sure they can learn and transfer their knowledge to pick up how AWS works specifically.As another example, say you’re hiring for front-end programming and looking for experience in React. If you have a candidate with experience in Angular or Vue.js, you could work with that. The candidate is obviously familiar with JavaScript and the various technology and frameworks that support development in that, and they can probably pick it up quickly. Same with back-end, a Python or Java developer could probably learn Ruby on Rails in short order.

Can smaller companies still attract experienced tech talent in today’s competitive market?

I always like to say, ‘fish where the fish are’. I know I can’t compete directly with Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc., so I’m not fishing where their fish are. But there’s still a massive pool of talent interested in being part of a startup story. Lots of people want the experience that comes from working in an environment where everybody gets to know each other, and you can directly see the growth you’ve helped the company achieve. I’ve worked for big companies in the past, but personally, my interests are more aligned with that growth story. I’ve had a lot of success with recruiting on LinkedIn, looking for suitable candidates and reaching out directly. 

Are you interested in exploring how transferrable skills can open up new hiring possibilities? Millenilink’s recruiting services are informed by current tech labour market conditions, and our understanding of technologies means we’re able to recommend alternative staffing options that will still serve your ultimate business goals. Get in touch and let’s chat.