Negating the role of prestige and reinforcing the importance of ability, motivation and personality means cultivating an effective, reliable and talented workforce capable of sustained impact and development.  

This Human Rights Day read more about how to rediscover top talent and promote social mobility. 

Introduction

2020 has offered a unique opportunity to re-engage with social mobility and reinforce the necessity of human rights. Whilst the emergence of essential workers has helped to dispel negative prejudice around lower-paid careers, the pandemic has contributed to significant involuntary decline in social mobility, particularly amongst vulnerable populations.

A key touchpoint for upwards social mobility is education, especially higher education of which offers a statistically higher likelihood of improved earning abilities. Due to the pandemic, this year’s university rates have plummeted culminating in an opportunity for businesses to reconsider what top talent is and re-discover how to find it.

At 10x, we were inspired by Human Rights Day to present both how integral and how simple it can be to gauge top talent for an individual business, without relying on a candidate’s academic success record.

Rethinking Education

University degrees have functioned as a rite of passage both socially and professionally for decades, resulting in many job descriptions today highlighting a degree as a base requirement.

Although degrees are necessary accolades in a variety of technical occupations, providing opportunities for those who pursue alternative, vocation led paths is integral to equip workforces with diverse, effective teams.

A recent report by the Social Mobility Commission has highlighted downward social mobility to stem from disadvantage and limitation particularly within academia and social life, where those who suffer bullying or have conditions like dyslexia can “fall through the cracks”. This is in part due to a cycle of constraint that emerges as resilience falls and the impact of bullying and stress increasingly affects a person’s wellbeing and performance in a vicious cycle.

At a time where health has been fundamentally compromised internationally, many are caught in an alternate cycle of caring for relatives and working for low wages and are unable to factor in additional academic work, despite being perfectly capable.

To recover as a better, and more supportive society, we must rethink the nature of education and wherever possible, consider competency and skill over academic prestige.

Recognizing Talent  

Recognizing talent starts with recognizing your own business needs and requirements to equip your organization with the right person to make an impact.

Informing a hiring strategy with the industry-leading psychometric assessments developed by us here at 10x means obtaining an objective and representative view of a candidate pool.

Our Solutions do not filter candidates by higher education; rather, our psychometric-based assessments are entirely developed around the personality, motivations and current abilities of candidates to fully determine what drives successful performance in the workplace.

Employers are completely in control of determining what skills and competencies are most important for an individual position, before our highly developed algorithms rank each candidate by how aligned their profiles are based on their performance on our suite of assessments,

Employers can then use this tailored and specific list to make informed decisions on candidate hiring and selection for their organization.

‘Recover Better’

The slogan for this year’s Human Rights Day encourages consolidation with the entrenched social issues that have fuelled the ongoing pandemic, linking a successful recovery to an advance in human rights.

To successfully meet this, and facilitate much needed change, employers have the option to embrace their key role in fostering dynamic workplaces where a diverse range of people can be enabled to meet their potential.

Discerning just how well a candidate might perform in the future, or how perfect a fit they are for a specific role is entirely possible with Solutions like 10x Optimize, and 10x Hire – where you can expect a simple and effective process to reliably inform your business of diverse, authentic top talent.