Hiring budgets are conservative this year, and only the highest growth markets around the region are likely to see head counts expand. Against this backdrop, employers have to be picky: they want only top talent, that 90th percentile of employees who have not only the capability to work at their current level but the potential to advance further.

Top talent, however, isn't easy to obtain or to retain. People Matters had the opportunity to meet up with Sumita Tandon, LinkedIn's HR Director for the APAC region, and we asked her to share some advice about hiring the people that the company most needs.

Look for tomorrow's great employee, not just today's

The very first thing that employers need to do, said Tandon, is to shift their mindset.

"You will not get someone who meets every single point on your wishlist," she said. "If you do, great! You've hit the jackpot! But when you don't, you need to take a step back. Perhaps the person is 80-85 percent there, and also shows the potential and the hunger to be able to develop what is missing. That's worth taking a bet on. And for me, selecting a candidate is about: can I take the bet? Can I give somebody a career versus giving them a job?"

"So let's take that step back and shift our approach and our mindset towards looking for potential. Let's hire the person for tomorrow, not necessarily today."

She has a recent example in her back pocket: one of the hiring managers in LinkedIn's regional operations had been trying to fill a role for several months without finding the perfect candidate, and came to her for advice. Tandon told that manager:

"Do you think that the person on your shortlist will only be able to do this job - running the team in their own location - or do they have transferable skills and potential? Because we in LinkedIn have multiple revenue streams. We have multiple sales teams, we have multiple markets, we have multiple products. Can this person tomorrow grow to do another job in LinkedIn? Can they have a five to eight year career in the company?"

The top transferable skill that great employees have

The number one transferable skill - or perhaps not even a skill as such, but a mindset - is the hunger to grow, Tandon believes.

"It's about wanting to see what's missing, and then developing it."

Years ago, she shared, she was the HR business partner for an engineering team in Bangalore, and her performance was assessed on the basis of how many leadership and soft skills she was able to introduce to the engineers.

"Because the engineers were only interested in coding," she explained. "They were not interested in acquiring or developing leadership skills. They really were very happy just doing their job, getting themselves upskilled on technical skills, but not seeing themselves as a leader versus an engineer. But my boss and my team had a vision of the future. They wanted the L&D managers to really influence and inculcate this learning for leadership skills. So it was quite a challenge for all of us to try and get the engineers to think about how, yes, engineering is what they've studied, what they're qualified for, what their job is about, but as they grow, they will have to look after a team, and then they will need the leadership skills that they don't think about today."

But even though the leadership skills were critical for the engineers to advance, that desire to grow was even more important, because without it, they would not have been able to acquire leadership skills in the first place - and hence the challenge that Tandon and her team faced.

How do you match your requirements with your candidates?

The first step in attracting star qualities or unicorn characteristics is to make it clear that you are looking for these features. And that means broad, generic descriptions are out, Tandon said.

"Let's be more specific about what we are looking for when it comes to skills. If you are looking for sustainability, if you are looking for AI, if you are looking for a specific technical skill, call it out and be specific. Let us not give a very broad description which can confuse the job seeker."

The second step is filtering the volume of candidates.

"Companies and hiring managers today want a superhero. They want somebody who has soft skills, also leadership skills, also technical skills. And it's not always easy to look for the needle in the haystack. So I think this is where AI comes in, to reduce some of that burden of filtering." Tandon said.

And that applies to job seekers as well. Don't just go out and apply for every single job you see, she cautioned.

"Use AI to match what skills you have and what is the company looking for, and then intentionally apply. On both sides, if you just take a step back and change your approach towards how you are writing job descriptions and how you are applying, mismatch can be reduced."

So, where do you find your next star employee?

They're already with the company, Tandon said.

If an organisation can shift its mindset away from "fit for role" and towards "fit for career", finding the talent it needs becomes significantly easier. But just making that change of attitude is a journey, she pointed out, one that can take a long while.

"In my opinion, it's a culture of learning that you have to build over a period of time. Whether it's a skills first mindset or whether it is investing in your existing workforce, it's not going to happen overnight," she said.

"I think we have done an okay job of that at LinkedIn. I don't think we can say we have really mastered it, but the intentionality is very demonstrated, right from our CEO and CHRO. We have our own product, which is LinkedIn Learning, available for our employees. And so at least for me, in the last 10 plus years that I've spent here in this organisation, I can see that there is a culture of learning, and there is intentionality, and there is role modeling."

And it's that culture which allows the organisation to build its own top talent, she added.

"We say that your next employee may not necessarily be outside. Your next employee is inside, if you have invested in the employee, and especially in skills that are transferable."