How S&P Global Built a Connected Skills Strategy

When the job changes faster than the job description

Picture a research analyst at S&P Global. A couple of years ago, much of the day went to gathering data and spotting patterns. Today, AI handles a large share of that work. Tomorrow, the role leans toward product management, client engagement and critical thinking: understanding what a model is doing and turning its output into insight a client can use. The job description on file describes none of this.

Recently I hosted a session with S&P to understand how this challenge forced them to rethink their approach. The first step for Charles Rue, Global Head of Talent Acquisition, and his team was to identify the roles that made up the DNA of the firm, strip each one back, and ask a simple question, ‘what skills will this role need over the next one to three years’? By doing that, they could translate business needs into skills needs and make skills the common currency for hiring, mobility and development. 

Governance is the unglamorous hero

As skills data starts shaping hiring decisions, S&P Global put governance at the center to ensure there is an understanding of the different data points and the part they play in talent decisions. Assessment data, resumes, screening calls, and interviews are considered holistically to provide an auditable signal that reduces the chance of bias creeping in, and increases hiring accuracy. This skills data feeds what the organization call their ‘skills data lake,’ where skills data can be reused across the talent lifecycle connecting everything to drive workforce management and development decisions.

With AI increasingly used on both the candidate and recruiter side, S&P Global have deliberately anchored their talent decisions in science, using SHL’s Global Skills Assessment to evaluate candidates so every decision is transparent and explainable to candidates, leaders and regulators—instead of opaque “black box” AI outputs or unvalidated inferred skills. 

One vocabulary from application to career path

Skills data can be just noise unless there is a clear skills taxonomy and language shared across all tools and systems used in talent processes. As part of the process, skills names and meanings were defined upfront to ensure all the tools were connected using the same language, and skills data could freely flow from the various sources to the talent marketplace—where every employee’s skills profile lives together with the skills requirements across thousands of job roles across the entire workforce.

For a hiring manager, this means candidate skills can be compared fairly and easily when making hiring decisions. For a new hire, onboarding is much easier as their skills profile is already populated on day one, providing them with career paths and learning recommendations straight away.

Existing employees also have visibility into their skills profile so it is easy for them to access recommended courses, mentorships and learning routes to develop skills in areas that are relevant to S&P’s long-term strategy and also see how their profile matches other roles within the business, opening up career pathways. For their managers, the development insights for each individual help guide and personalize coaching and feedback conversations to further enforce and empower their growth. 

Your job advert is the first assessment

Starting the skills-based hiring approach didn’t begin with collecting skills data, but rather with the job advert right at the top of the funnel. Once the skills needed to succeed in each role were determined, and skills profiles for groups of roles were created, S&P could then design job adverts to reflect the skills its talent marketplace flags as missing or needed soon.

With 800,000 candidates screened each year, this critical step is key to determining the success or failure of the entire hiring process. If an advert isn’t right, the wrong people are attracted at the top of the funnel, and no downstream tool can fix it. A thoughtful advert acts as a screening tool, improving the quality and relevance of candidates, and then with SHL assessments, S&P can accurately measure these skills, mapped against the job profiles to identify their top candidates.

In addition, S&P have created a skills council consisting of stakeholders across all areas of the business that reviews how roles are shifting, because a skills profile written six months ago can already be out of date, so this helps ensure that profiles are adjusted and reflect how skills are moving, ensuring the hiring is always aligned with the skills that are needed within the organization.

Becoming a skills-based organization doesn’t happen overnight, but as S&P Global have proven, a well-thought-out approach, underpinned with trusted skills data and governance, can drive stronger, fairer and more defensible talent decisions.

Read the S&P Global customer story to see how SHL is supporting their skills journey with trusted talent intelligence.