Dive Brief:

• Most HR professionals responding to a recent survey said they plan to use skill tests as part of their hiring processes in 2020, Tilr said in research shared with HR Dive Jan. 22.
• Describing skills as the "new talent currency," the company said respondents ranked appropriate skills as the No. 1 factor in making a hiring decision; culture fit was a distant second and learning capacity ranked third. 
• "Traditional approaches to hiring are no longer an option as companies contend with a shortage of talent, changing candidate expectations and an increasingly competitive recruiting market," said Tilr CEO Carisa Miklusak in a media release. "In the coming year, companies must look at candidates differently, which includes embracing non-traditional workers such as older Americans and former Armed Services members and assessing them through skill tests — not resumes."

Dive Insight:

To contend with the digital skills gap, experts say employers must broaden talent pipelines and focus on reskilling workers. Gayatri Agnew, senior director of Walmart Giving, offered thoughts similar to Miklusak's at an October conference: the digital gap presents barriers for people who aren't given the opportunity or time to develop those skills, she said.

But this can't be a one-time effort. Technology will continue to shift, driving the need for continuous upskilling. This means HR professionals could be spending more time and resources on career development, as a recent Gartner report projected. Gartner said employers haven't kept up with the rapid change in required skills that automation and digitization have created, creating a need for HR to focus on development to meet the demand in 2020. 

Many have already made this shift, however. Nearly all respondents (91%) to a recent Randstad Sourceright study said they believe their organization has a duty to reskill workers to overcome the talent shortage, and 22% said they're training or reskilling their current workers to address the issue.