1. Adult literacy will continue to vex talent advisors.

One of the battles facing any talent advisor is adult illiteracy.

A 2013 study, conducted by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institute of Literacy, found that 32 million U.S. adults (14 percent of the U.S. adult population) are unable to read.

Furthermore, 21 percent of U.S. adults read below a fifth-grade level. Finally, 19 percent of high school graduates can’t read.

For applicants, this can mean missing out on a quality job, or being unable to secure decent health care. While talent advisors can “take a proactive, strategic role in an organization’s talent management needs,” even the best advisor recognizes that adult illiteracy provides a potent barrier to an organization reaching its optimal level.

Talent advisors will continue to look for ways to unearth quality employees and address this challenge.

2. The role of alternative credentials will be clarified.

Candidates are always looking for ways to stand out from the crowd. Massive Online Open Courses, or MOOCs, are hyped as one alternative to more traditional education avenues by enabling individuals to gain additional knowledge at a discount.

As MOOCs continue to grow in importance, only recently has their impact on talent selection been discussed. A 2014 Duke University study noted:

“Three-quarters of organizations viewed MOOCs very positively or positively (73 percent) with respect to their potential influence in hiring decisions for job applicants who had taken job-related MOOCs.”

Questions talent advisors will have to consider in 2015 include: How will HR professionals react when an applicant’s resume or LinkedIn profile is filled with courses from Coursera? Will such candidates be viewed similarly to someone who had completed his or her bachelor’s degree from a traditional college or university?

MOOCs will also likely impact compensation. Is knowledge-based pay being awarded based on the completion of a number of courses? Are MOOCs another way for talent advisors to encourage continuous learning? Seventy-two percent of those currently taking MOOCs already have a bachelor’s degree or higher. Are organizations seeing a subsequent payoff in performance as a result?

Talent advisors will need to dig into the data and examine how these courses impact building the skills of tomorrow.

3. The growth of online competency-based education.

Competency-based education is trendy. As Michelle Weise writes in Harvard Business Review:

“Competency-based education identifies explicit learning outcomes when it comes to knowledge and the application of that knowledge. They include measurable learning objectives that empower students.”

More than 350 college institutions are looking to adopt degree tracks that feature this approach. The modularization of learning could better prepare the talent of tomorrow for what the employer truly needs: the knowledge, skills and abilities of a successful employee.

For applicants or current employees, a competency-based approach means a flexible, personalized, and self-paced approach to learning that fits his or her unique needs. For talent advisors, this means going beyond the mere credential that demonstrates a student passed a set of courses, without also having a clear sense of how much he or she has actually mastered the concepts.

Source: http://thehiringsite.careerbuilder.com The Hiring Site