A growing number of employers are showing interest in skills-based hiring — moving beyond education and experience requirements to focus on the skills match between candidates and roles, according to a recent report by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).
More employers are becoming aware that assessing candidates on their abilities and potential, rather than degrees and job histories, can provide instant economic opportunities for millions of job seekers, help relieve talent shortages, increase diversity and strengthen internal mobility in the workplace.
“Most of the employers we talk to are highly receptive to this message, and they recognize that with the current talent shortage, skillsbased hiring is the best approach for a wide range of roles with significant high-volume need and higher-than-average turnover,” said Angela Briggs-Paige, SHRM-SCP, head of people and culture at the nonprofit Opportunity@Work. The Washington, D.C.-based organization works to expand professional career access for people without college degrees.
Emily Field, a partner at global management consulting firm McKinsey & Co., said skillsbased hiring is “one of the main topics that I hear CEOs and CHROs asking about. They continue to face a skills gap and a talent shortage, and at the same time, recruiting technology is screening out more than half of the applicants due to [them not meeting education and experience requirements.”
One-fifth of current U.S. job listings on LinkedIn don’t require a four-year degree, an increase of over 30 percent over the past six months. Since 2019, the share of recruiter searches on LinkedIn filtering for skills has grown by 25 percent; recruiters are now 50 percent more likely to search by skills than they are to search by years of experience.
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