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Talent acquisition teams are constantly looking for new sources of talent. One often-overlooked strategy is to tap into “hidden workers,” individuals with valuable skills who are frequently missed because of hiring practices, policies, or technology. I previously shared my one-page cheat sheet with nine examples of these worker segments, including retirees seeking to reenter the workforce and caregivers who have stepped away from work to care for children, elderly parents, or other family members and friends. This new MIT article zeroes in on caregivers and makes the case that employers may be overlooking a talent segment that has developed many of the human skills organizations increasingly need. Drawing on research from the Rutgers Center for Women in Business, the authors found that caregiving helps build capabilities such as empathy, adaptability, time management, problem-solving, and managing complexity, with many of the core workplace and leadership skills employers increasingly value. In a workplace being reshaped by AI, that matters because these human capabilities are becoming even more important. For organizations, the takeaway is that treating caregiving as a resume gap may cause them to miss strong talent, while those that better recognize these skills may strengthen talent pipelines. Which overlooked talent segments could your organization better engage to strengthen its talent pipeline?
