The July newsletter
Skills, AI and better talent decisions — four perspectives gathered from London to Paris, plus a closer look at AI readiness.
Over the past few months, we’ve met HR and Talent leaders at several events across Europe, discussing the changes reshaping the way organisations hire, assess and develop people.
One shared theme emerged from these conversations: AI creates new opportunities, but turning them into better decisions requires reliable data, a clear understanding of people’s skills, and processes that combine technology with human judgement.
In this edition, we bring together four perspectives on these topics — gathered from London to Paris — alongside a closer look at AI readiness and the experience of one of our clients in the pharmaceutical field.
A VivaTech award and fresh perspectives
At VivaTech in Paris, we joined companies, startups and international leaders to discuss how AI is transforming the world of work.
One of the clearest takeaways was that the AI challenge is not only technological, but also organisational. For HR leaders, this means understanding which skills are needed, how to develop them, and how AI can support more informed talent decisions.
During the event, we also won the ManpowerGroup Startup Challenge, “Redesigning Work for the Age of AI” — an important recognition and an experience that gave us fresh ideas and perspectives on the future of work.
Beyond skills-based hiring
A couple of weeks ago in London, together with ExecTASocial, we sat down with a group of Heads of Talent Acquisition to discuss some of the biggest challenges shaping hiring today: improving candidate quality, building hiring-manager trust, enhancing the candidate experience, reducing mis-hires, increasing assessment adoption, and understanding the growing role of AI across the talent lifecycle.
One point emerged clearly: skills-based hiring is no longer just a selection methodology. It is becoming the foundation for more objective and evidence-based talent decisions across hiring, development, and internal mobility.
But making this shift requires more than new technology. HR needs the influence to help CEOs and other business functions understand the strategic value of a skills-based operating model, as well as cross-functional support to overcome implementation challenges — from technical integration to resource allocation. Only then can organisations fully connect people strategy with measurable business outcomes.
How ready is your organisation for AI?
Adopting new tools does not necessarily mean that an organisation is ready to use AI effectively. Self-assessments, claimed skills and generic benchmarks provide only a partial picture of actual readiness.
That’s why we developed a test that measures both technical knowledge and the ability to apply AI with sound judgement. It is built around the organisation’s real roles, processes and use cases, helping identify existing capabilities, relevant skill gaps and priorities for upskilling and reskilling.
In this way, AI readiness can become a concrete source of information for making more targeted development decisions.
Making skills visible at Fidia Farmaceutici
How can an organisation make skills assessment and development more structured, objective and scalable?
In our latest customer story, Gianluca Magnani, Global People & Culture Officer at Fidia Farmaceutici, explains how the organisation moved from CV-based to skills-based criteria — making skills and potential more visible in order to develop more and more people across a 900-person sales network, where previously only 5-10% managed to progress in their career.
The objective is not to replace human judgement, but to provide a stronger foundation for building development paths aligned with both people’s potential and the organisation’s needs.
Towards better talent decisions
From hiring to people development, these experiences reflect the same underlying need: to understand skills more clearly and make talent decisions that are more informed, objective and grounded in the reality of each organisation.
We’ll continue sharing practical insights, conversations and real-world examples of how AI and skills-based approaches are transforming the work of HR leaders.
Better talent decisions start with clearer skills.
Book a demo and see how Skillvue verifies skills and AI readiness across your organisation.