07.10.2025
Skills adjacency is simple: take what people already do brilliantly, then tighten and retune those capabilities for a new role or industry through focused learning and smart mentoring. In sectors where demand is red-hot and time is tight, skills adjacency lets you redeploy experienced professionals from areas in decline into roles that are crying out for talent. It plugs the gap between early-career cohorts and colleagues approaching retirement, without slowing the business down.
So why isn’t everyone doing it? Because too often, organisations treat skills adjacency like a compromise, something you try when the perfect ‘unicorn candidate’ fails to appear. That mindset misses the point. The success of skills adjacency depends on knowing two things with clarity: the mission-critical aptitudes that must already be present, and the technical competencies that can be taught quickly. When you draw that line well and support it with a measurable process, skills adjacency becomes a strategic engine for growth and not a fallback.
That’s exactly what Morson’s Skills Adjacency Service is built for. Designed to sit at the heart of your talent strategy, it’s an agile, data-driven model that delivers clarity, certainty, and alignment with your hiring objectives. We co-create the programme with your team, keep the mechanics simple, and keep the outcomes front and centre: fill the right seats, fast, with people who ramp quickly and stick.
The latest Employer Skills Survey from the Department for Education paints a stark picture:
The Factor Framework: three levers, total control
Every skills adjacency project we run is anchored to three factors you can see, steer, and measure:
- Time: How many days it will take to find and onboard the people you need.
- Cost: The fixed budget you commit to the project.
- Mentoring: The number of hours your team invests to transfer know-how and accelerate effectiveness.
With those levers agreed up front, we challenge you (in the best way) to rethink how you acquire talent. The result is a model that will:
- Resolve your skills gap within a defined timeframe and budget.
- Protect you from the compounding impact of long-term vacancies.
- Avoid salary inflation and endless searches for “unicorns” that can’t be bought or borrowed.
- Capture the IP already in your business through purposeful mentoring.
- Use psychometric and numerical reasoning tools to match adjacent talent to your high-performer profile and supercharge team performance.
- Deliver targeted, bespoke training via Morson Nexus, connecting strategy, selection, and development in one joined-up flow.
We co-create the programme with your team, keep the mechanics simple, and keep the outcomes front and centre: fill the right seats, fast, with people who ramp quickly and stick.
Collaboration that actually moves the needle
We don’t pitch you a generic fix; we build the right one with you. That starts by getting crystal-clear on the non-negotiable competencies and aptitudes needed for success, mapped to your current team, business goals, people strategy, and sector dynamics. We work with stakeholders across HR, talent acquisition, and learning & development to align skills profiles with competence levels that are realistic and valuable to the business. That alignment secures strategic buy-in, gives operations full visibility, and builds trust in the process, because everyone can see how and why it works.
Here’s who does what:
- Our programme lead owns the process and keeps it locked to your objectives.
- Our consultancy team handles profiling, search, assessment, and onboarding, drawing on deep candidate networks and selecting the right psychometric and numerical reasoning assessments for your brief.
- Your team provides role specs, mentoring support, and a clear commitment to the programme.
Morson Nexus designs and delivers the training that translates adjacent capability into on-the-job impact.
Skills adjacency in seven steps (no fluff)
Every engagement is bespoke, but the methodology is consistent and proven. We keep it simple:
- Pre-work & planning
We benchmark your high performers with psychometrics to uncover the traits that drive success in your context. Those insights define the desired competency, aptitude, and attitude profile for adjacent hires, and the baseline requirements for targeted training.
- Role definition & analysis
You share job titles, current descriptions, and the competency matrix for post-training performance. Together we agree the post-training outcome goals—clear, measurable, and business-relevant.
- Candidate profile development
We build a “plasticine person” profile, malleable but precise, capturing the must-have traits and teachable gaps. We refine it with you and design a recruitment process that selects for this profile, not just a CV keyword list.
- Training programme design
Morson Training crafts a bespoke curriculum mapped to your roles and outcome goals, covering:
- Technical proficiencies
- Role-specific delivery techniques
- Standard operating practices
- Stakeholder engagement & resourcing
We define mentoring requirements, agree the time-to-effectiveness plan, and lock in your Factor Framework³ (time, cost, and mentoring hours) to deliver the programme objectives without drift.
- Programme implementation
We run structured workshops with stakeholders to embed the process, align expectations, and remove blockers before they appear.
- Training delivery & monitoring
Training is delivered to the adjacent-skills cohort, with continuous monitoring and adjustments to keep progress on track and capacity aligned to demand.
Stop chasing mythical candidates and start hiring for potential that’s been precisely profiled to match your top performers.
Why this works
Because it balances speed with science. You stop chasing mythical candidates and start hiring for potential that’s been precisely profiled to match your top performers. You turn mentoring into a strategic asset that captures and transfers institutional IP. You create a predictable path from vacancy to value—with the dials (time, cost, mentoring) visible and under control. And you broaden your talent pool dramatically, tapping capable professionals whose industries may be shrinking but whose skills are primed to thrive in yours.
If you’re serious about closing skills gaps, stop waiting for perfect résumés to land. Start building a repeatable, measurable pathway that turns adjacent skills into business performance.
