Seeking Both Knowledge and Skills Among Employees

Summary: Companies generally look for certain attributes in employees: knowledge, skills, abilities or a mix. What is best at your company? How do you navigate through the choices? Click through for tips on sound hiring practices.

The various qualities you look for in new staff may be referenced interchangeably, but actually embody different traits. Ideally, they may complement one another, as two sides of the same coin. A contemporary approach is more holistic, emphasizing a combination of education, experience and potential.

Yet hiring practices demonstrate some flux. Among many employers, there has been movement toward an emphasis on hands-on skills, with less focus on formal educational college degrees. Managers and HR teams need to clarify exactly what elements they are targeting to constitute the most productive teams and what proficiency each role requires.

Knowledge as a foundation

Knowledge often serves as the solid platform upon which job skills may be based. It is loosely defined as a body of information and understanding of a particular subject; it may comprise multiple facts or concepts, sometimes connecting various disciplines and fields. It can also be procedural, comprising step-by-step methods to perform certain tasks and activities, such as order filling or cooking.

It can also be categorized as direct or tacit. Examples of direct knowledge would be government regulations, document preparation, mathematical formulas or grammar. Tacit know-how is often acquired through practice and observation — think of driving a car, playing golf or tennis, or knowing how to play a musical instrument. For driving, you can memorize the rules of the road or learn how an engine functions. However, you really need time behind a wheel to know what you are doing. In other words, you may need to perform a job in order to understand it.

In common parlance, knowledge derives from formal education, books, lectures, workshops, seminars, courses, research, analysis, critical thinking and the overall synthesis of information. We tend to apply it as a framework for interpreting the complexities around us. It may be quickly and efficiently imparted or transferred to a recipient, for instance in the form of a product code.

Why do companies prize knowledge? It primarily serves as a baseline for competency, especially in certain professions. Think medicine, law or engineering — you would not want someone who flies by the seat of their pants! Moreover, if certified by a degree or qualification, it helps connote professionalism and credibility, which raises confidence among peers, co-workers, clients and customers.

Practice makes perfect skills

In the workplace, a host of skills enables employees to put knowledge into action with tangible results. In most cases, skills involve manipulating items, data and people. They come in an array of forms.

• Technical – domain-specific and measurable, such as programming, data analysis, engineering and graphic design
• Interpersonal – active listening, conflict resolution, networking
• Cognitive – logical reasoning, decision making, strategic thinking
• Creative – ideation, storytelling

A developed set of skills allows employees to perform their work tasks effectively and efficiently. In fact, almost every function at work necessitates some level of soft skills, which may range from organization and adaptability to empathy and communication.

Every manager recognizes these building blocks for successful teamwork and enhanced productivity. It takes honed skills to boost versatility, leadership, learning and emotional intelligence. Repetition makes proficiency. Employees and their supervisors can leverage joint efforts through collaborative projects, including feedback to refine basic skills.

Interplay between knowing and doing

Skills and knowledge may be complementary. HR departments strive to measure and validate both strengths.

We are now seeing some resetting of priorities in middle-skill positions. In the early 2000s, many employers added new degree requirements, which led to degree inflation. More recently, the trend has moved toward requiring some post-secondary education, but short of a four-year degree.

When the demand for talent exceeds the available supply, companies are more inclined to de-emphasize degrees, as occurred from 2017 to 2019 in IT fields. Although many employers still use degrees as a proxy for soft skills, 45% of firms in 2024 expect to eliminate degree requirements for some roles, as companies like Walmart did in 2023.

Remember that knowledge tells us that tomatoes are fruits, but it still takes skill (and some wisdom) to know not to put them in a fruit salad!