Today’s recruiters know it all too well: they’ve got it down to two candidates. Both match the company’s culture, both have great answers to interview questions, and both have the right foundational background. They are identical on paper. The one separating factor is one practical exercise. When candidates are given a chance to showcase their skills, everything changes. The hiring decision becomes less about background and more about what they can actually do for the organization. This practice is called skills-based hiring.
What is Skills-Based Hiring?
A growing trend in recruiting, Handshake defines skills-based hiring as going “beyond majors and focuses on the candidates’ skills that are applicable to the role.” For example, while an applicant may not necessarily have a corresponding course of study for a position, they may still have the skills that would be needed for the position. For instance, a non-technology major may still have certain technology skills, such as experience using programs or software, despite the difference in declared major, because they have experience from classwork or projects in school. Some employers are even removing degree requirements completely if a candidate has the necessary skillset.
According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), in a given number of survey participants, 70% reported using skills-based hiring in both their screening and interview processes. That’s up from 65% last year. Skill development is more important than ever in today’s job market. Current college students may have an advantage in skills-based hiring if they build up their practical skills while simultaneously excelling academically. NACE also reports that the 73% of employers that do not screen applicants by GPA and the 67% that do both consider if candidates are proficient in key competences when making hiring decisions. In short, this means that recruiters are increasingly more interested in a candidate’s skills and precisely what level of skill they possess.
What Talent Acquisition Used To Be
The older version of recruiting involved a lot of drilling down and process of elimination. The tools for those eliminations included the type of degree, GPA, years of experience, and the relevancy of that experience. As an applicant, it was frustrating to feel like you were being weeded out based on GPA when you had relevant experience. On the other hand, recruiters needed a rational response to the overwhelming volume of applicants responding to one job posting. These levels of criteria were numbers-driven and defensible, something that a simple “good feeling” was harder to be. If a hiring manager asked why a candidate was advanced, the recruiter could point at specific data, such as results-driven or tangible examples of work product, to back up their decision. These examples allow a recruiter to better advocate for the candidate and show a hiring team the applicable impacts a candidate can make to a skills gap on their team.
The issue with this method of recruiting was that it measured access just as much as it measured ability. It can be argued that these criteria can aim at which candidates had access to better opportunity, such as who could afford a certain school or spend a summer working unpaid instead of those who may be a better choice but may not have had that same access. A good proxy for capability among people who had opportunities is not a good proxy for capability. Candidate visibility on both ends of the hiring pipeline is essential when it comes to modern hiring.
Once organizations decided to stop relying on that shortcut, the goal of narrowing down the candidate pool bit by bit wasn’t eliminated. It was only more difficult with the subtraction of certain criteria. However, it was also easier to visualize how exactly a candidate would impact the organization. Natalie Morrissey, Flex HR’s Director of Recruitment, mentions that with skills-based hiring, “employers are more interested in hiring someone that is invested in the company and interested in growing there.”
What Talent Acquisition Is Now
Now, talent acquisition now has four functions that were not previously within the job description.
1: Defining the Target
Translating real job tasks into a job description with observable capabilities can be challenging, but it is an important part of talent acquisition. This can be easy to miss by hiring managers because it was just simply never written down previously. Recruiters now run the conversation, and every downstream decision inherits its quality.
2: Designing the Evidence
Knowing what you’re looking for is different from being able to see it. This requires something to be built: an interview with structured questions and scoring criteria, a work sample, and a realistic scenario. Building out any of these is design work, especially when considering actual performance, and most people who are doing it didn’t have any experience in doing it before.
3: Defining the Standard
Assessing skills ensures that candidates don’t fall through the cracks due to minute details, such as what school they went to or a non-linear career path. The decisive moment arises when a hiring manager looks at a candidate who cleared every screening and every interview and says, “I’m just not sure.” This is the critical moment in the hiring pipeline where the system either holds new changes or reverts back to instinct. Holding requires strong recruiters who aren’t afraid to advocate for the system and the candidates themselves.
4: Verifying the Claim
Online applications and AI-assisted “easy apply” and resume builds have allowed each candidate to list their skills, and mass apply to open roles without needing to focus their skills and specific experiences to a specific role. While this has made the process easier for the candidate, it has made the volume of applications crushing for recruiters. Self-reported ability can only take a candidate so far. They must be able to show their abilities sooner in the hiring process, which can mean more work upfront for both the recruiter and the candidate. In turn, this is exactly the opposite of the efficiency that AI implementation promises to give.
Where Will Skills-Based Hiring Take Recruiting In The Future?
Recruiting has always been a critical position for each organization. It builds and enforces the culture of the company and the people who maintain it. The biggest change in the position’s responsibilities is judgement. Each recruiter must maintain accurate judgement about what competence looks like, design sense to build a fair way to see it, and the nerve to hold a standard strong. That’s a substantially more difficult job than the one being done just a few years ago.
Almost none of it is visible from outside. A candidate will see a job posting and, if things go well, an offer letter. They won’t see the argument about what “qualified” means, or the hour someone spent forcing a definition out of a hiring manager who thought there already was one.
Global Talent Acquisition Day
Wednesday, September 2nd, 2026, is Global Talent Acquisition Day. To all recruiters, hiring managers, candidates, and anyone who ever sat in on an interview: thank you for all your hard work. The future of organizations all over the world couldn’t be so bright without all of you.
Hiring the right people is one of the most important investments your business can make.
Whether you need help with a single role, leadership search, recruiting strategy, or a complete recruiting function, Flex HR provides the expertise, partnership, and flexibility to help you hire with confidence.
Sign up for our Newsletter to stay current on the latest HR news, trends, and best practices.
