As a business, how do you hire? Do you follow the standard hiring practice? Stick to the safe and structured processes and criteria that were laid out by previous employers? If you’re sticking to this rigid way of hiring, you’re likely excluding a vast portion of the population, which could be exactly what your company needs, because these days, the rule book has been thrown out the window in terms of hiring, and the old way of hiring? It doesn’t work for modern life.
And if you’ve ever found yourself uttering the phrase “there’s a skill shortage”, maybe it’s not that people aren’t qualified, it’s that you’re looking in all the wrong places. Because the reality is the talent is likely already there, you don’t need to know how to find it. Let’s take a look at where you need to look.
4 modern hiring practices
1. Look past the degree
Sometimes there are job roles that explicitly require a degree, but not considering skills, and modern hiring practices, talent on paper only means you might be overlooking someone uniquely qualified or has vast amounts of experience that just aren’t formally recognised by an educational institution. You need to look past the degree, look at experience, natural ability to do the job role, and those who went to night school. Consider them all and what they bring to the old, not just the exams they passed or qualifications they gained at school.
2. Boomerang employees
The ones who left might want back in, and you might need them back in. Harbouring grievances against employees who left you will only shrink your talent pool. They could have moved on, upskilled, learnt more, and are in a position to come back as an altogether better employee who brings value and experience to the table. From this perspective, they’ll be familiar with what you do, but come back equipped with more strength that works in your favour.
3. Border control
Sometimes the best people for the job aren’t in your country or timezone, never mind your zip code. Talent isn’t local anymore, as understood in the Staff Augmentation provider WebCreek’s Talent without Borders 2025 Study.
These days, there are multiple tools that can help you with modern hiring practices, people from across the world, meaning you’re opening yourself up to a new talent pool that works in your favour. You can boost operations, keep things running, and lean on the best minds in your sector to get results. In modern business, borders don’t matter, and they aren’t barriers to talent.
4. The overlooked applicants
This speaks more to societal norms and bias than anything, but there will always be those applicants you overlook for whatever reason. Maybe they’re neurodivergent, and you don’t want that extra hassle of accommodating them. Shame because they have the best analytical mind, and they can run through numbers like a hot knife through butter. Your loss.
Maybe they’re the people who have just left prison, and you don’t want a criminal working for you? Valid, but do you know they enrolled in a puppy training program behind bars and are now able to hone this skill to help teach others or work under pressure with patience and respect for others? By considering the most commonly overlooked people in society, you will likely find exactly what you’re looking for. Because even without the most conventional skills, they still bring something to the table.
