Hiring the right person has never been straightforward. If you have ever hired someone who looked great on paper but struggled in the role, you are definitely not alone. It is frustrating, and it is common.
A lot of this comes back to how we filter people at the start. We rely on obvious markers such as job titles, degrees, and years in the field. They help narrow the list, but they can also shut the door on candidates with the strongest long-term potential.
Now that around two-thirds of organisations are facing serious skill shortages, it is becoming clear that the way we assess talent needs to change. Looking at past roles, certifications, and experience is not enough. We need to look more closely at potential and how to identify a candidate’s untapped potential before it shows up on paper.
This guide is about noticing the hidden signals of potential. It is about looking past the surface, so you do not miss people who could make the biggest difference to your team.
Key Takeaways: What You Will Learn in This Guide
In this guide, you will discover:
- Why traditional hiring fails
Many organisations still rely on outdated markers like degrees and job titles. These filters can exclude candidates with high potential and contribute to ongoing skills shortages. - The hidden cost of surface-level hiring
Poor hiring decisions can cost up to 200% of an employee’s annual salary once you factor in turnover, lost productivity, and training expenses. - Five critical indicators of untapped potential
How to assess adaptability, problem-solving under pressure, cultural intelligence, curiosity, and resilience using practical questions and scenarios. - Skills-based assessment strategies
Why most companies see better outcomes when they focus on demonstrated skills rather than just formal qualifications, and how to introduce simple skills-based tests into your hiring process. - Interview techniques that reveal potential
How to use behavioural questions, the STAR method, panel interviews, and future-focused questions to understand how candidates think, learn, and adapt.
The Hidden Cost of Surface-Level Hiring
Churn is not always caused by poor hiring, but it is clear that many organisations are struggling to make informed decisions.
Around 53% of employees leave new jobs because expectations are not met, and roughly 30% leave within the first 90 days. That is a lot of time, money, and energy lost.
The wrong hire costs more than most teams expect. It is not just the recruiter’s fee or the hours spent interviewing. It is the months of slow progress, the extra strain on colleagues, and the work that needs to be redone.
Recruitment and HR experts often estimate that replacing someone can cost between 100% and 200% of their annual salary. When you add the basic expenses of recruitment, the time managers spend interviewing and reviewing applications, the cost of training and onboarding, and the impact of lost productivity, it is easy to see how quickly costs add up.
When you hire based only on what is easy to measure, such as degrees, exact job history, or familiar systems, your chances of hiring someone who will not last grow significantly. To reduce that risk, you need a better way of assessing candidate potential.
Beyond the Resume: Key Indicators of Untapped Potential
Resumes and cover letters are useful, but they are also limited. They are a record of the past. They tell you where someone has worked and what tools they have used, but they rarely give a clear picture of a person’s true skills, characteristics, and future potential.
So what should hiring leaders be looking at instead when they are assessing candidate potential?
1. Adaptability and Learning Agility for Spotting Hidden Talent
Roles and requirements are changing fast. Skills have an average half-life of around five years, and that window is getting shorter with the rise of AI, automation, and new technology. Adaptability is now one of the most important indicators of future performance.
Ask candidates to describe a time they were asked to take on something unfamiliar, such as a system they had never used or a project outside their usual scope. Pay attention to how they approached it.
Did they seek training, ask questions, or learn by trial and error? The strongest answers show a clear process for getting up to speed, and a willingness to step into discomfort rather than avoid it.
2. Problem Solving Under Pressure
Most roles involve challenges that people have not faced before. What matters is how equipped they are to work through those challenges, especially when the pressure is on.
Behavioural questions are a simple way to see this in action. Choose a problem that is relevant to your team and ask the candidate to walk you through their thought process.
What did they notice first, how did they decide what to do next, and who did they involve?
Scenario-based tasks are also useful. Give them a short brief and a time limit, then ask them to talk through how they would break it down. You are not just looking for the “right” solution; you are looking at how they think, structure their approach, and communicate their reasoning.
3. Cultural Intelligence and Soft Skills
Soft skills can be harder to measure, but they are often the difference between someone who lifts a team and someone who disrupts it. Research shows that around two-thirds of employers now see soft skills as more important than formal qualifications.
You can often test soft skills well in group or panel interviews. Observe how the candidate listens, whether they interrupt, and how they adjust their tone with different people. Ask for examples of working with colleagues from different backgrounds, locations, or work styles.
Look for evidence that they can read a room, adapt their communication, and build trust with different types of stakeholders. These are all strong indicators when you are identifying untapped talent.
4. Curiosity and Initiative
Curiosity is easy to miss if interviews are rushed or overly scripted, but it is a powerful signal of long-term potential and this hidden talent is difficult to train.
Give candidates enough time to ask questions. Strong signs include questions about your current challenges, how success will be measured, or what the first few months will look like. Curiosity often predicts ongoing learning, which is essential in skills-based hiring and fast-changing environments.
Initiative sits alongside curiosity. Look for real examples where candidates acted on their curiosity. Did they take a course in AI because they could see it would be useful, volunteer for a cross-functional project, or find ways to improve a process without being asked?
These examples show you who is likely to keep growing once they join your team.
5. Resilience
Resilience and adaptability usually go together. While it is critical for employers to protect well-being, it is also useful to understand how a new hire responds when things do not go to plan.
In behavioural interviews, ask candidates about a time they faced a professional setback. Let them explain the situation, how they reacted, and what they did afterwards.
The best answers do not gloss over the challenge. They acknowledge what went wrong, take ownership where appropriate, and show how the experience helped them grow. These are the candidates who are more likely to stay the course when work becomes difficult.
The Skills-Based Assessment Shift
For years, many job ads opened with the same line, “Degree required.” In some roles that is fair; the job genuinely needs the academic background. In many others, it is simply a filter. It is quick to apply and easy to defend, but it excludes a large group of people who may be just as capable, or more so.
The shift towards skills-based hiring changes that. Instead of starting with “Where did you study?” it starts with “Can you do the work?” Studies show that around 90% of companies achieve better results when they hire for skills rather than degrees. A strong portfolio or practical demonstration often tells you more about job readiness than a line on a resume.
Skills-based assessment does not need to be complex.
- For a sales role, you might ask a candidate to prepare a short pitch based on a mock client brief.
- For a technical role, it could be a small repair task, a code challenge, or a practical test drawn from real work your team has handled.
These assessments give you far more than a yes or no. They reveal how a person thinks, how they work under pressure, and how they explain their choices. They are at the heart of good skills-based assessment strategies.
Transferable skills also matter. Someone from a related industry may not know your exact systems, but if they have solved similar problems before, the learning curve is usually shorter than you expect.
This is where “new collar” workers, people who have built specialised skills through alternative pathways, often stand out. They bring real capability without being locked into a narrow career path, and they are usually highly adaptable.
How Professional Recruiters Can Help You See Potential Earlier
Skills-based assessments can help you make better hiring decisions, but support through the process also matters.
Specialist recruiters who understand your space see patterns that most hiring managers do not. It is not because they have a secret checklist. It is because they spend every day talking to candidates, tracking industry trends, and watching how careers progress over time.
Over time, they learn what potential looks like long before it shows up clearly on paper. That makes them valuable partners when you are focused on identifying a candidate’s untapped potential, not just filling a short-term gap.
If you are working with a recruiter, ask about their process.
- Do they use skills-based testing?
- How do they probe for adaptability, cultural fit, or leadership potential in non-managerial roles?
- How do they assess transferable skills and people from non-traditional backgrounds?
The answers will tell you whether they are genuinely looking deeper than the surface.
The best results usually come from long-term partnerships. When a recruiter understands your culture, team dynamics, and business goals, they can filter candidates with your real environment in mind.
Interview Strategies That Reveal Hidden Potential
Interviews are often where potential is either revealed or overlooked. Most interviews stay on a safe track. They confirm experience, check skills, and ask a few cultural questions. All of that is useful, but it often leaves deeper potential unexplored.
A few small shifts can change that.
1. Use Behavioural Questions with the STAR Method
Behavioural questions help you understand what someone has actually done, rather than what they say they would do. Ask candidates to describe real situations, what their role was, what action they took, and what happened as a result.
Listen for STAR responses, where they cover the Situation, Task, Action, and Result. Once they have told their story, ask what they would do differently if they faced the same situation again, or how the experience shaped the way they work today. This is a simple, practical way of assessing candidate potential.
2. Add Future Focused Questions
Future-focused questions help you see how someone thinks ahead. For example, “If you were leading this project in a year, what would you change?” or “If you joined the team tomorrow, what would you want to learn in your first month?”
These questions invite candidates to think beyond their past and show you how they would contribute over time. They are particularly useful when you are identifying untapped talent who might grow into new responsibilities.
3. Use Panel Interviews Wisely
Panel interviews can be powerful when they are structured well. Having more than one interviewer in the room changes what you see.
A technical lead will notice different things from a team manager. HR or a people leader might pick up potential culture issues or strengths that others miss. The discussion afterwards, comparing notes, is often where the clearest picture forms.
Hiring for Long-Term Potential, Not Just Short-Term Fit
You do not need to overhaul your entire hiring process overnight. Start small.
Look at the last few people you hired. How did you find them, what made you say yes, and what are they doing now? Are they performing as you expected, or have they grown into something different?
That quick review will often tell you more than a large report.
Then pick one thing to change straight away:
- Add a short skills test.
- Swap one standard interview question for something that digs into how they learn.
- Ask your recruiter to walk you through how they judge potential, not just experience.
Keep track of what happens. Note how long it takes to fill the role, how the new hire is going six months in, and whether the team feels the fit is right. Simple measures, written down, make it much easier to see what works and what does not.
Adjusting your hiring process now, with a clear focus on potential and skills-based hiring rather than short-term gap-filling, can give you a real edge in a tight 1. recruitment market.
You can also read more information on this topic here.
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