How To Channel Your Skills and Find Your Best Side Hustle

Are you ready to test the waters of entrepreneurship? Start with a side hustle. Having a side hustle gives you security, reassurance, diversity of income, and most importantly, it gives you the possibility for something more than just the mindless 9 to 5.

Since a side hustle is really a business at it’s core, I’m going to argue that a business is nothing more than a format for channeling your skills, experiences, abilities and interests into a neat little package that helps people accomplish something meaningful.

When thinking about what it means to start a business, it’s easy to let your mind race around all of the to-do list items like writing a business plan, filing for an LLC, setting up your website, getting a logo designed, making business cards, optimizing your Facebook page, the list goes on and on. But here’s the truth: None of these tasks matter at all today…Continue reading…

By: Ryan Robinson

Source: How to Channel Your Skills and Find Your Best Side Hustle

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The skills involved can be defined by the organization or by third party institutions. They are usually defined in terms of a skills framework, also known as a competency framework or skills matrix. This consists of a list of skills, and a grading system, with a definition of what it means to be at particular level for a given skill.

In some cases, organizations can also use mutual feedback and assessments to crowdsource the calculation of skills.To be most useful, skills management must be an ongoing process, where individuals assess and update their recorded skill sets regularly. These updates should occur at least as frequently as employees’ regular line manager reviews, and certainly when their skill sets change.

Skills management systems record the results of this process in a database, and allow analysis of the data, typically to assist with project staffing or hiring decisions.To perform management functions and assume multiple roles, managers must be skilled. Robert Katz identified three managerial skills essential to successful management: technical, human, and conceptual. In 2003, the HR team at IBM saw the need to develop a set of tools and processes for managing their large workforce.

IBM could see that data insights would become ever more vital to business success and they concluded that a system that tracks and provides ample information about their most important asset (their people) was needed for continued performance. As a result, they developed the Workforce Management Initiative.

IBM recorded tremendous success from this initiative. Although the system cost millions of dollars to implement, IBM quickly saw the financial benefits of the system. They stated that the system “paid for itself just in the hard savings from better contractor management, not counting the improvement in full-time employee management.”

Over time, many other companies saw the value of tracking employee skills. Some initially tried to do this with ratings on paper documents, but this was largely unsuccessful since they ended up with a large amount of paper documents that cannot be queried. Others used spreadsheets which performed much better than paper reviews. Spreadsheets are still being used to track skills in our time.These spreadsheets are called skill matrices.

As a result of skills management, employees would be aware of the skills their job requires, and any skills gaps that they have. Depending on their employer, it may also result in a personal development plan (PDP) of training to bridge some or all of those skills gaps over a given period. Employees gain from improved identification and understanding of their own strengths and weaknesses, from being able to set personal goals, and to understand the value they bring to the organization (which in turn can boost morale).

Skills-based hiring refers to the practice of employers setting specific skill or competency requirements or targets. Skills and competencies may be cognitive (such as mathematics or reading) or other professional skills, often commonly called “soft” skills (such as “drive for results” or customer service). The intent of skills-based hiring is for applicants to demonstrate, independent of an academic degree the skills required to be successful on the job.

It is also a mechanism by which employers may clearly and publicly advertise the expectations for the job – for example indicating they are looking for a particular set of skills at an appropriately communicated level of proficiency. The result of matching the specific skill requirements of a particular job to with the skills an individual has is both more efficient for the employer to identify qualified candidates, as well as provides an alternative, more precise method for candidates to communicate their knowledge, skills, abilities and behaviors to the employer.

In skills-based hiring, the applicant is tested by a third party and presents the scores to the employer as part of the application process. In this sense, skills-based hiring is similar to the U.S. practice of individuals taking third party (e.g., SAT or ACT) tests, and then using those scores as part of a college application. Skills-based hiring is distinct from pre-employment testing, in that it is not the employer who issues the test or controls who sees the scores.

The specific skills needed for a job, and their corresponding levels, are established by the employer through job profiling. Thus, skills-based hiring requires not only that suitable tests be available for applicants, but also that employers have a legally compliant process for defining the levels and suite of skills required for each distinct job title for which they wish to hire. Advocates of skills-based hiring claim it has the following beneficial effects for employers:

• Turnover: 25-70% reductions in turnover, often to levels of 4% or less, due to a more exact match of applicant to position.
• Training: 25-75% reductions in employee training time, training cost, and/or time-to-full-productivity
• Hiring: 70% Reductions in cost-to-hire; 50%-70% reductions in time-to-hire
• Productivity: “Significant,” though usually unspecified, increases in total employee productivity
• Universality: The same skills-qualification methodology can be used for all jobs within the same company, from entry-level through upper management. This is because skills tests are designed to assess across a far larger range of ability than typical academic, placement, or certification exams.
• Ability to locate applicants (by skill scores) for “hard-to-fill” jobs requiring unique skill combinations or jobs for which there is no formal degree program
• Shifting of the testing burden from the employer (typical in pre-employment testing) to the applicant (typical in skills testing)