Beyond the CV: Implementing Effective Skills-Based Hiring in Your Company

A CV is a useful starting point when you are recruiting. It tells you where someone has worked, what they have done and how their career has developed.

What it cannot tell you on its own is whether that person can do the job you are recruiting for.

This is where skills-based hiring can help. Rather than screening people primarily on job titles, qualifications or years of experience, you start by looking at what someone actually needs to be able to do in the role.

That does not mean experience and qualifications suddenly stop mattering. In MedTech, they can be extremely important. The point is to understand why you are asking for them and whether they are genuinely essential.

What Does Skills-Based Hiring Actually Mean?

Skills-based hiring starts with the job rather than the person you imagine filling it.

Instead of beginning with a list such as:

• Five years' medical sales experience
• Previous experience in the same therapy area
• Degree educated
• Excellent communication skills
• Strong commercial awareness

you look at what the successful person will actually need to do.

For a Territory Manager, that might include developing new accounts, growing existing business, managing a large geographical territory, building relationships with different NHS stakeholders and understanding a clinically complex product.

For a Clinical Specialist, it might include supporting procedures, training healthcare professionals, explaining complex information clearly and building credibility in a clinical environment.

Once you know what success requires, you can decide which capabilities someone must already have and which they could realistically learn.

1. Start With What the Person Needs to Be Able to Do

Before writing the job description or reviewing CVs, look at the role itself.

What will this person be expected to achieve in their first six to twelve months? What situations will they need to handle? Who will they need to influence? What knowledge will they need from day one?

Be specific.

"Good communication skills" tells you very little. Being able to explain a complex product appropriately to a surgeon, theatre manager and procurement professional is much more meaningful.

"Commercial awareness" is equally vague. Do you actually need someone who can identify account potential, open new business, manage a long sales cycle or develop an established territory?

The clearer you are about what the role involves, the easier it becomes to assess candidates against something useful.

2. Separate Essential Requirements From Familiar Ones

This can be one of the hardest parts of putting together a recruitment brief.

Some requirements really are essential.

A particular clinical qualification may be necessary. Experience in theatre may matter. A role may need someone who already understands a particular customer group or has experience of a complex capital sales process.

But other requirements can creep into a brief simply because they feel familiar.

If you are asking for three years' experience in a particular market, ask why. What does somebody with those three years know or know how to do that another candidate would not?

If you can answer that clearly, keep the requirement.

If you cannot, it may be worth looking at the capability behind it instead.

3. Decide What Must Be There on Day One

Very few candidates will arrive with absolutely everything you would ideally like.

The important question is what you can realistically teach.

Product knowledge can often be developed through training. Knowledge of your internal systems certainly can. Someone moving from an adjacent MedTech market may be able to learn a new therapy area.

Other gaps may be much harder to bridge within the time available.

If you need someone to take over a challenging territory immediately, for example, appointing somebody who has never managed a sales territory before may create too large a gap.

There is no universal list of skills that can or cannot be taught. It depends on the role, the person, the training available and how quickly you need them to become effective.

4. Write the Job Description Around the Actual Role

Once you have worked out what really matters, make sure the job description reflects it.

Long lists of requirements can put off potentially strong candidates, particularly when some of those requirements are preferences rather than necessities.

Separate the things somebody genuinely must have from those that would simply be useful.

This also gives candidates a much clearer idea of what they would actually be doing and helps your recruiter understand where there is room to look at people from adjacent backgrounds.

5. Look for Evidence, Not Labels

A job title does not always tell you what somebody has actually done.

Two Territory Managers with very similar CVs may have had completely different roles. One may have inherited a successful territory and focused largely on maintaining existing accounts. The other may have opened new accounts, introduced new products and grown an underperforming area.

The same applies when somebody comes from a different sector or type of role.

Rather than asking whether they have held the exact title before, look for evidence that they have dealt with comparable situations and can demonstrate relevant capability.

Ask what they personally did, what changed as a result and what part of the outcome they were responsible for.

6. Use Job-Relevant Assessments Where They Add Value

You do not need an assessment for every vacancy.

Where one would genuinely help you make a better decision, keep it relevant to the work the candidate would actually be doing.

For a sales role, you might ask someone to talk through how they would approach an underdeveloped territory, prioritise a group of accounts or present a product proposition.

For a clinical role, you might ask them to explain a complex subject clearly or demonstrate how they would approach training a customer.

Any task should be proportionate to the role and designed to give you useful evidence, rather than simply adding another stage to the recruitment process.

7. Structure Your Interviews Around Consistent Criteria

Skills-based hiring works best when candidates are being assessed against the same core requirements.

That does not mean every interview has to feel scripted. It means deciding in advance what you need to establish and making sure you gather comparable evidence from each person.

If account development is important, ask candidates for a specific example. If the role requires influencing clinicians, explore when and how they have done that. If resilience matters because the territory will involve significant new business development, ask about a time they had to keep working at an opportunity despite setbacks.

This gives you something more useful to compare than who gave the best interview performance on the day.

8. Consider Transferable Experience and Potential

Skills-based hiring can be particularly useful when the obvious candidate pool is small.

Someone may not have worked in your exact therapy area but could have sold to the same customers. A clinician may not have worked in sales but could bring strong product knowledge, credibility and experience of influencing others. A salesperson from another market may already know how to manage a territory, open accounts and work towards a commercial target.

That does not mean every transferable candidate will be right.

The question is whether the experience they already have gives them enough of a foundation to learn what they do not yet know.

9. Don't Replace One Shortcut With Another

Moving beyond rigid CV criteria does not mean replacing them with vague judgements about personality or "cultural fit".

Someone feeling like a good fit in an interview is not evidence that they will perform well in the role.

Keep coming back to what the job requires, the evidence the candidate has given you and any gaps that would need to be addressed.

Technology can help organise applications and support parts of the recruitment process, but it should not replace that judgement either.

Skills-Based Hiring Doesn't Mean Experience Doesn't Matter

There is nothing wrong with wanting relevant experience.

For some MedTech vacancies, previous experience in a particular market, clinical environment or type of sale will be one of the strongest indicators that somebody can get up to speed quickly.

The problem comes when requirements are included without questioning what sits behind them.

Rather than asking, "Does this person have exactly the background we expected?", ask:

What does this person need to be able to do, what evidence do we have that they can do it, and what could they realistically learn once they join us?

That still leaves plenty of room for experience, qualifications and a strong CV. It simply stops them becoming the whole decision.