Non-linear career paths as an asset in recruitment

What criteria do you use to select new employees? Is a comprehensive CV with various positions in well-known companies within your industry essential? Or, is an education from a prestigious academic institution the deciding factor? Do you look for very specific skills in the references and CV? Undoubtedly, CVs, letters of motivation and also work references provide important insights into a person who is applying for a specific position.

But what are the most important criteria that make a team successful? It often becomes apparent in daily professional life that a person’s attitude and aptitude within a team can have an extraordinarily positive (and in other cases, unfortunately, also a very negative) effect. So, are attitude and aptitude the main criteria for employment in your company or are these two dimensions a “nice-to-have” alongside many others?

Of course, a certain number of specific skills are important when hiring for a specific job. For example, it is impossible to adapt the specific skills of a surgeon to a communications specialist, and – without a medical degree and years of experience – be successful. There are, however, skills that can be transferred from one industry to another.

For example, a hotel manager shows a very high level of service orientation in everything he/she does, and for him/her, customer satisfaction is his/her top priority.

Service orientation and a constant striving for customer satisfaction are also of central importance in sales talks, for example in the insurance industry. In addition to a great deal of love and care, successfully raising children also requires skills such as stakeholder and time management and often also particularly clever project management. These are the three skills that are needed in many industries today to master the challenges of the future and to develop innovative solutions.

No one can predict with absolute certainty today which specific skills will be important in the future in order to be successful. The central question remains therefore, what steps can we take today to hire the best employees for the future? One way to do this is to define recruitment criteria and divide it into mandatory „must have“ and „nice to have“ categories very carefully. In addition, non-linear CVs require special consideration during the application process as a break in the CV does not necessarily mean that no new skills were acquired during this time. Rather, in non-linear CVs it is important to find out which specific skills are available and in which function within the company these can best be used.

In doing so a person’s attitude and mindset should always be taken into account and which of his or her personal skills can be transferred to new fields of activity. If we succeed in this, people with the most diverse perspectives and skills will work together in the individual teams and, with the right attitude and mindset, be particularly successful in mastering the challenges of the future.

Here is an example from MasonBresse of what leaders pay particular attention to.

The Career Empowerment Label is awarded by the University of St.Gallen and the Avenir Group to companies that hire people with non-linear CVs and are committed to the topic of “Career Relaunch” with special measures. Applications are possible at any time. More information on the Career Empowerment Label.

The 3rd Career Relaunch Conference took place on 18 January 2022. The event focused on the question of what to consider when repositioning oneself professionally, what the skills of the future will be and what companies place particular emphasis on when recruiting today. A summary of the conference can be found here.