In this situation, it is worth looking not only at how many people we are looking for, but also at the criteria by which we are searching for them. One reason why the pool of candidates sometimes narrows too quickly is very specific previous experience requirements: “five years of experience required,” “experience in a specific sector required,” “ability to use a specific tool required.”
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Such criteria are not inherently wrong. However, today they do not always help predict who will be the best employee not only in the first but also in the fiftieth week of work. The reason is simple – the work context itself is constantly changing.
Artificial intelligence changes not only the tools used at work but also the tasks themselves and the ways they are performed. Moreover, organizations have to constantly adapt to changing economic and geopolitical circumstances, customer expectations, ways of organizing work, and also the employees’ own expectations regarding work and career. Therefore, it becomes increasingly important not only what a person already knows but also how they react to change – whether they can learn quickly, adopt new ways of working, retrain, and adapt to changed circumstances.
However, a practical question arises here: how to assess this during the selection process? After all, it is impossible to reliably determine a candidate’s ability to learn and adapt just by asking if they “learn quickly.”
Experience is important. But does it tell us who will be tomorrow?
One candidate may have much more specific experience and be ready to work independently from day one. Another may come from a related field, lack all the necessary knowledge, but quickly grasp new things, review their decisions, and adapt to new working methods. Which of them will be more valuable to the organization after a year? It is impossible to answer this question just from a CV.
Of course, experience should not be opposed to potential. Experience helps assess what a person can bring to the organization today, while potential shows how they will be able to grow with the changing work. The problem arises when previous experience is set as too high a bar, and as a result, people who do not have specific experience but have a strong professional foundation and the ability to learn quickly are excluded from the candidate pool.
Therefore, when forming position requirements, it is worth distinguishing what a person really needs on the first day of work and what can be learned after starting the job. Before writing “five years of experience required,” it is important to ask: how much of this experience is really necessary to achieve the result? If a specific tool, process, or work method can be learned in a few months, maybe it is not worth rejecting a person coming from another field because of it.
How to see a person’s potential during a short selection?
To assess how a person learns and adapts, we should get to know them more deeply. However, neither candidates nor employers want long selection processes anymore. Therefore, the question today should not be “how to learn as much as possible about the candidate?” but “what is most important to learn about them in a limited time?”
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First of all, it is worth using the interview time differently. Professional history, education, and necessary experience can be assessed before the interview, so it is not necessary to retell the candidate’s CV during the meeting. It makes more sense to spend this time on what the CV does not show – how the person thinks, learns, reacts to new information, and makes decisions.
One way to check this is a short practical task related to real work. Even more information can be obtained by changing one condition of the task. We provide new information and observe what happens. Does the candidate continue to defend the first decision? Do they ask questions, review their assumptions, admit that the previous decision no longer fits, and change their way of acting?
Such behavioral signals about adaptability can say much more than declared “flexibility” or “fast learning.”
Similarly, the ability to work with AI can be checked. It is important not whether the candidate uses AI, but how they use it. While performing a short task, one can observe what the person delegates to technology, how they evaluate the obtained result, what they check, what they reject, and where they keep the decision and responsibility for themselves.
Selection should not bear all hiring risks
At the same time, one should not expect that all hiring risks can be eliminated during the selection process. If an organization consciously expands the candidate pool and chooses a person who does not have all the competencies specifically required for the position, it is logical to transfer part of the investment to the period after hiring. Here, quality onboarding, clear expectations for the first months, learning opportunities, and early feedback become important.
The employee journey should be seen as a continuous chain: attract – select – onboard – help achieve results – help grow.
This does not mean that we should start hiring only people with potential and ignore experience in all cases. It just means that before starting to look for a new employee, it is worth asking ourselves whether the criteria we have formulated meet the need. Or are we sometimes, out of inertia, looking for too exact a version of yesterday’s employee, when in fact we need a person who is ready to learn and change together with the organization.
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