Solving the skills gap isn’t about hiring ready-made talent, but about how quickly they can learn what the business needs tomorrow, explains Simon Reichwald at Connectr and Chris Shirley at Form the Future.
Leaders talk constantly about the skills gap. With technology evolving faster than people’s skills, they’re trying to figure out how to build a workforce that can keep up.
Yet job ads tell a story of narrow requirements - ‘entry-level’ roles demand years of experience and filters screen out anyone without the exact keywords.
There’s a growing disconnect between what the C-suite says and how organisations actually hire.
When convenience replaces potential
Under pressure to reduce risk, cut costs and deliver immediate ROI, many employers have stopped building talent and started obsessing about buying it ready-made.
Potential has been traded for convenience. We prioritise people who can do the job today over those who could solve tomorrow’s problems.
Ironically, the ‘perfect hire’ often carries the biggest risk:
- They’re expensive.
- They’ve already done the job, but may disengage quickly.
- They struggle when skills become obsolete and priorities shift.
Meanwhile, motivated graduates, career-changers, returners and the nearly one million young people not in education or employment - many with curiosity and learning agility - are filtered out before they’re even seen.
Short-term thinking, long-term problem
Skills-based hiring promised broader talent pools and fairer access. But when applied through a short-term lens it still favours static skills over adaptability and intent.
We can’t solve a long-term skills gap with short-term thinking. The real question isn’t “What do they know today?” but “How quickly can they learn what we’ll need tomorrow?”
At Connectr Talent Technology, we’ve focused on identifying candidates with high intent - individuals whose behaviours demonstrate commitment to the role, their career and continuous development. Alongside organisations like Connectr Early Engagement and Form the Future, the aim is to give young people access to employer engagement, employability skills and meaningful career pathways.
The results show what happens when organisations shift their mindset.
Case study: G’s
G’s, one of Europe’s largest fresh produce providers, supplies 1.2 billion packs of produce annually across the UK, Europe and North America. Operating in the rural Cambridgeshire Fens - an area with high deprivation and significant NEET levels - the company historically struggled to recruit specialist roles such as engineering, finance and farm management.
In 2022, G’s relaunched its early careers strategy to reduce agency reliance and build a sustainable local talent pipeline aligned to long-term succession planning.
Early careers was broadened to include apprentices, graduates, first and second job entrants, interns and those completing work experience.
Recruitment shifted from hiring purely for experience to assessing behaviours and potential, using assessment centres to identify curiosity, teamwork, learning agility and critical thinking.
The impact has been significant:
- 23% of all external hiring now comes from early careers
- 18% of the early careers community achieved promotion or role change within two years
- 10% of work experience placements converted into permanent hires
- £100,000 annual reduction in agency spend
- Time-to-offer reduced to 30 days
What started as a response to recruitment challenges has become a strategic workforce model - strengthening succession pipelines, accelerating progression and supporting social mobility in a deprived rural community.
The lesson is simple: when organisations hire for intent, behaviours and learning capacity, they don’t just fill roles, they build capability.
So what’s your view - has ‘experience required’ for entry-level roles gone too far, or is the risk of training talent genuinely too high in today’s economy?