In times of skilled labour shortages, it is crucial for both employers and jobseekers to find each other – even when the applicant’s profile doesn’t fully match the job requirements. What matters is recognising transferable skills. But how can both sides tell whether they are a good fit? Thinking alone helps – but unfortunately, it doesn’t get you very far!
Recruitment and job applications are facing challenging times: labour market demands are shifting, and job profiles are becoming increasingly specialised. New professions are emerging, while education and training systems struggle to keep pace.
As a result, the ideal “dream profiles” often no longer exist. The key, therefore, is to identify those who possess transferable skills – experience from other areas that can be applied to the role in question (see my article “Do you know your transferable skills?”).
Abstraction is the wrong approach
Applicants are becoming increasingly aware of this situation and try to demonstrate their suitability by highlighting transferable skills. Yet many choose an ineffective approach: fearing that recruiters might dismiss them too quickly based on concrete examples, they describe their experience in overly abstract terms. They may avoid mentioning the industry or the products they worked with. But since open positions are highly specific, this abstraction hides potential fit. In such cases, linear thinking will not get you anywhere.
Success lies in the opposite direction: the more vividly you describe your experience, the easier it is for recruiters to see what you mean – because fit is recognised through associative thinking.
Associations need images
Associative thinking activates stored experiences, sensory impressions, and emotions. The brain searches for similarities, patterns, and analogies – along the lines of: “This candidate describes exactly the challenges we face,” or “He approaches problems the same way we do.”
Matching a candidate profile to a job profile is ultimately a visual process: recruiters need images in their minds. So feed their inner eye. That’s why storytelling is the most effective – and, in fact, the only truly successful – approach in job applications. Attempts to automate or industrialise recruitment repeatedly fail, at least when it comes to complex profiles. Only once associative thinking has recognised a fit does linear thinking step in to verify the details.
Recruitment and application, therefore – especially for demanding roles – are more art than science.