First published in The Hardware Journal, April 2024.
At The Hardware Show in February, one frustration came up again and again: employers weren’t getting applications from people with the experience their job ads asked for. With skills shortages right across Ireland, specialist roles are hard to fill. One answer is to hire for potential.
What hiring for potential means
Rather than working through a checklist of past achievements, you assess what someone could do next: their aptitude, adaptability and appetite to learn. That opens the door to people from different backgrounds and less traditional career paths. They often bring fresh thinking, which matters in an industry focused on new ranges, better marketing and sustainability.
Making it work
- Assess properly. Competency-based questions, psychometric assessments and scenario exercises help measure qualities a CV can’t show.
- Commit to onboarding. Structured training and mentoring close the gap in industry-specific knowledge.
- Start earlier. If someone is retiring in a year, hire their successor now and allow a proper handover.
- Consider a graduate programme. Selecting on attitude and potential, then investing early, builds your future leaders.
It isn’t without risk. Motivation and resilience are harder to judge than experience, and not every hire will develop as quickly as hoped. But in our experience, candidates chosen for their potential are often among the most successful placements we make.
Read the full article in The Hardware Journal
Thinking about who you could hire? Talk to us about recruiting with Tactical Talent.
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