At Rafiki, we believe fundamentally in skills-based hiring. It’s one of our central pillars when working with freelancers across Africa, and something we believe holds huge potential for the continent in its ability to provide previously overlooked regions the international exposure to remote opportunities they deserve.
The rise of skills-based hiring
The Boston Consulting Group recently reported that due to rapid changes in technology, many companies are struggling to hire or retain workforces who have the dynamic ability to upskill and reskill continuously, something younger generations, and in our experience, freelancer and contract workers, are incredibly good at. Skills-based hiring empowers organisations to access and hire individuals, either full-time, fractional or freelance, without the previously required degrees needed to enter certain occupations.
Freelancers are often self-taught, are required to stay ahead of the curve of technical advancements out of necessity, and as such often power players for larger teams.
The emergence of exciting EdTech companies is part of a broader trend of the democratization of professional development, “sparked in part by increasing awareness and recognition of the mismatch between what traditional education is delivering to young people and what’s demanded by employers.” - Tech Crunch
We’re adamant that by providing access to the right skill-focussed courses for up-and-coming talent in Africa, the barriers to entry into career paths, previously guarded by expensive tertiary, traditional education establishments, are fast becoming less relevant, empowering a new generation of talent in Africa to access digitally global opportunities.
Technology has changed and is changing rapidly, and with it, the labour market. However, for the most part, the slow-moving gears of our education systems haven’t kept pace. Zoom-styled schooling of traditional curriculums simply acts as a band-aid on a flawed system, rather than a fundamental reimagining of how we learn.
Traditional colleges or universities are often financially exclusive, lengthy, and inefficient use of time. It’s estimated that 85% of today’s college/university students will have jobs that don’t currently exist.
The unbundling of education
The shift to lifelong learning is already gaining momentum. Education won’t be a lump-sum consumed in the first ~20 years of life, but something we all sporadically consume throughout a career. The pace of technological change will necessitate it.
Online and hybrid, intensive boot camps and short courses are already proving extremely efficient for both horizontal shifts in career and vertical gains in placement, and proving to be a better way to hire skill-specific talent as a near turnkey solution to a startup's tech stack or processes. This is exciting because it can drive down costs of learning and continues to open up opportunities for previously marginalised communities.
Rafiki's insights into the freelance economy in Africa
Over the past 5 months, we’ve taken a very deep dive into the pain points faced by freelancers in Africa, and startups, agencies, and recruiters in the UK. Rafiki is now building out a platform focused on these pain points and the opportunities they serve. We believe we have very specific and unique insights into the freelance economy, and we’re excited to release our private beta later this year.
In the meantime, our fully managed service for freelance management, product design and growth marketing support for startups and progressive companies in the UK continues to act as our vehicle for growth and the continuous validation of our platform release this year.
We encourage companies to challenge the biases in talent strategy, support the integration and DEI opportunities that skills-based hiring offers, and start paying more attention to the actual skills your business requires in a very granular approach.
Early adopters of this approach will benefit from reduced times to fill open positions, costs per hire, diverse teams, better retention of talent, and ultimately a more sustainable approach to company growth and talent management.
If you’re looking for freelance and fractional talent management solutions, or fully managed product design and growth marketing support, please do reach out, we’d love to help.
Schedule an intro call with one of the Rafiki founders today.
Original article on LinkedIn here.
