Digital Mindset – Digitization with the right attitude

Digital transformation is progressing slowly in many companies. They often find that this is not due to a lack of suitable technologies or tools, but rather to a lack of skilled workers. This means employees who have a strong digital mindset. We explain what this is and how to find such talent below.

There is no universally valid definition of digital mindset. When we talk about a person with such a mindset, we primarily mean that this person has a certain basic attitude. This is characterized in particular by the following aspects:

• Openness to digital change processes
• Interest in digital developments
• Understanding the opportunities and impacts of Digitalization
• “Digital first” claim
• Interest in state-of-the-art processes and technologies

The digital mindset is therefore made up of specific behavioral and personality traits that are evaluated in the context of digital transformation.

In a large-scale Study by OneStopTransformation A total of 6 dimensions of personal digital mindset characteristics were identified:

1. Openness and agility: This refers to the behavior of people in situations in which they are confronted with new or unfamiliar digital developments.
2. Proactivity and entrepreneurial action orientation: This dimension describes how motivated people are to proactively advance the digital enterprise in the overall context of the company.
3. Creativity and design motivation: This refers to the extent to which people are able to create and introduce meaningful innovations.
4. Customer focus: This digital mindset dimension shows the extent to which the customer perspective is taken into account when finding a solution.
5. Ability to accept criticism: What is meant is the extent to which people can critically examine their own actions and those of others in order to initiate constructive optimization.
6. Dealing openly with failure: This dimension explains the extent to which people can deal openly with failure.

The economic impact of the digital mindset dimensions was also examined as part of the study. The results showed that the dimensions of openness & agility and proactivity & entrepreneurial action orientation in particular have an enormous influence on the success of a company.

According to a study by the digital consultancy etventure, the lack of qualified employees with digital know-how was among the top five obstacles to digital transformation in 2019.

Know-how can be acquired as long as a person is open to it and interested. Accordingly, there is no need for perfectly qualified employees with specialized digitization skills. Rather, there is a need for people with the above-described Digital Mindset, especially with a strong dimension of openness and agility.

Once you have found these people, you can easily help them with Training and further education teach the necessary digital know-how within the shortest possible time.

But how do recruiters find such open and motivated people who are willing to develop digitally? Whether a candidate is interested in digitalization topics and is willing to learn, for example, can only be determined to a limited extent in a interview find out and even in the CV you will only be able to find some clues.

The solution must therefore be a validatable test procedure that is designed to precisely identify digital competencies and potentials such as creativity, openness, critical ability, etc. Or in other words: A system is needed that analyzes the level of development of a candidate's digital mindset dimensions.

This is exactly what the AI-based E-Recruiting Tools flynne The application focuses on competencies and potentials and consciously excludes motivated candidates when searching for candidates. Career changers The Artificial intelligence helps to identify suitable talents without prejudice.

Also interesting: Tech Recruiter: Experts for recruiting staff in the IT sector

So that the Skilled labor shortage does not hinder the digitalization processes, the targeted identification and promotion of talents with a digital mindset is necessary. If candidates have such a mindset, companies can quickly train them to become specialists with specialized digital know-how for their industry.

Want more recruiting know-how? Check out our glossary and in our Recruiting Blog over!

(Cover image source: mrmohock – Shutterstock.com)