Talent shortages affect many industries, but the inability to find workers in the healthcare industry is more of a talent crisis than a shortage. Since December of 2010, ten thousand Baby Boomers a day turn 65 years old – and this will continue for the next 10 years! Most physicians are able to see 18 patients per day, and, if those physicians work 240 days per year and if their patients each visit twice per year, then those doctors will have 2,160 visits per year. (source) Nurses are overworked as well. The Bureau of Labor & Statistics predicts that there will be more than one million nursing positions to be filled by 2024--that’s only 6 years away, and finding nurses to fill positions is a problem today. In fact, the nursing [...]
Read full entry

In today’s world of ever increasing and changing technology, people often wonder what skill sets they will need to be successful in today’s job market. Of course, that begs the question: Are we talking about hard skills or soft skills? In 2018, and 2019, both types of skills will be necessary, so let’s take a look at both types. Hard skills If you were to survey several articles, you would find technical skills listed as being the most in-demand. In one large LinkedIn survey, the Top 10 hard skills desired include: Cloud and distributed computing Statistical analysis and data mining Middleware and integration software Web architecture and development frameworks User interface design Software revision control sy [...]
Read full entry

Up to a certain point, a startup or a small business (if it turns out to be a successful one) skyrockets, its progress charted as a vertical line with an arrow pointing upwards. Because of this initial growth, most businesses feel compelled to take on far more challenging projects – which usually leads to a “we just bit off more than we can chew” situation, causing the business to stumble. It’s no one’s fault in particular, and it’s everyone’s fault at the same time. New demands require new skills. To be capable of handling these new projects, your talented staff needs training and you need to take a close look at how you manage workflow. But how to get there quickly, before stakeholders give up on your business and [...]
Read full entry

It is not a myth! The “Skills Gap” is real. But the question is why? If you speak to job seekers, they will tell you they are talented and skilled, yet no one calls them back. Yet, when speaking with recruiters and companies who are actively looking to hire, they say it is very difficult for them to find quality talent. What do employers look for in a candidate? Some of you will say experience, others will say skill, and then there are those that will say personality. The answer is yes to all of those things—plus education and interpersonal skills. Employers are looking for the complete package: someone who is intelligent, educated, and skilled, knows how to communicate, and has a great personality. Someone who is proactive, crea [...]
Read full entry

Without customers, businesses don’t exist! We can all agree that having someone to buy our products or services makes customer service a key component to a successful business. But all customer service does not have to be conducted the same way. Some key skills, however, contribute to excellent customer service across industries. Gregory Ciotti recently reviewed the 16 customer service skills that every employee needs. Beyond these foundational elements of customer service, what kinds of customer service, unique to your organization, do you aim to provide? You will need to take the time to evaluate what skills your employees need to reach those goals. These differentiators will help you determine what skills to recruit and test [...]
Read full entry

There's SO much unreliable information about résumés out there—making it impossible to completely trust what you are reading. In addition, using interviews and detailed tests to reduce a large applicant pool is time-consuming and inefficient. So... what if you could: 1. Accurately screen for the most skilled candidates prior to in-depth interviewing 2. Increase the skills of your customer service staff while reducing turnover from poor hiring choices 3. Decrease the risk of discrimination litigation 4. Use objective, defensible data for hiring decisions. If you did that, you'd make better hires in less time, while reducing legal risk. To make these improvements, you need to enhance your candidate screening process [...]
Read full entry

A digital marketing company identified a new development opportunity and was looking for a copywriter capable of taking control of all content creation. So, they came up with a test for the job.  The candidates’ task was to write the content marketing plan for the company. Keen to understand how the candidates would approach the task, company asked applicants to prepare a short summary proposal to be evaluated. Key marketing team members will judge the applicants’ proposals, using a variety of criteria: persuasive language, grammar, marketing skills, communication skills, creative approach and structure of ideas. Is it possible for the marketing team to evaluate this kind of application in an unbiased and systematic manner? Y [...]
Read full entry

Janet Bryan is the District Manager at Universal Staffing, Inc. She shares how her company struggled with skills testing before switching to eSkill. “It’s been a couple of years since we used Prove It! One of the issues we had in using Prove It! was that it was technically very glitchy.”    Imagine this… “We would send the tests to a candidate and expect them to take them over the weekend or even overnight. We’d come in Monday, or the next morning, to see that there were NO scores.  When we would contact the applicant to find out why, and they would tell us something like… ‘The program froze mid-test and I couldn’t continue” or “I never even got a link to start!” We would sometimes have to email a link [...]
Read full entry