Using AI to Identify Employees Who Would Benefit from Reskilling

In today’s economy, it’s not only employers that are seeking long-term benefits from employment; more and more applicants are looking for jobs that allow for personal growth and training. Millennial applicants are looking for their employers to invest in them (and their future with the company).

Identifying candidates for training and promotion can be difficult, but it’s also costly not to do so. Employees are frequently unhappy when they feel they’re not being utilized to their full potential. So how can employers determine which employees are the best candidates for promotion?

The future of recruiting is in artificial intelligence, and it’s no less true of reskilling. “AI offers a data-driven approach that suggests to everyone in the process of advancement, retention or training what will be the most valuable way for them to advance,” says Vin Vashishta, chief data scientist at Pocket Recruiter.

Here are three ways AI can help identify your existing talent and place them successfully within your company.

Learn to Ask the Right Questions

If you run a successful business, chances are you already have quality employees. But how does a company supply a need for specialized employees? The answer: By taking advantage of the people you already have. “Companies that handle, for example, cybersecurity, may have a hard time sourcing quality new employees,” Vashishta says. “Reskilling existing employees saves time and money.”

Matthew Stevenson, partner and co-leader of Mercer’s Workforce Strategy and Analytics Group, says the data is there to be mined to determine which employees qualify for reskilling. “We have basically infinite data, so the skill set needed to do this type of work will become less ‘How do I work with data?’ but rather ‘How do I ask the right questions with the data I have?’ ”

Optimize Training

Many companies invest in training, but they don’t always take a step back to determine its effectiveness. Stevenson says AI can use data to identify which programs have high success rates and which ones aren’t working as well. “AI is a form of statistical analysis,” he says. “Ask the right questions, and you can learn a lot about what’s working, and what’s not.”

Investing in training — and in research on training — will ultimately bring about a smooth reskilling process. It demonstrates to employees that you want to see them succeed, and are prepared to give them the tools they need to make that happen.

Make Your Employees Feel Valued

Employees who feel undervalued and underutilized tend to drag a business down. For the sake of both your company and your employees, AI-driven reskilling is paramount.

“In a lot of cases, the reason why people leave a job is because they don't feel valued,” Vashishta says. “That's easy to fix if you understand that this person is one skill away, two skills away, or maybe they're two years away. If you can give them a career path into that next field, if you keep them satisfied. AI can point to candidates and say, ‘This person's two skills away. This person's a two-year degree away.’ AI is huge in identifying which candidates are best to move up, but also in suggesting a feasible reskilling itinerary.”