To hire for skills instead of degree requirements, define what the role must accomplish, remove degree screens that are not legally required or demonstrably job-related, and assess candidates against consistent evidence of those capabilities. Use relevant work samples, structured interviews, job simulations, or validated skills tests—not credentials or self-reported confidence as substitutes for evidence.
What skills-based hiring means
Skills-based, or skills-first, hiring evaluates candidates on their ability to do the work. The skills may come from paid employment, volunteering, self-directed learning, or other experience; a degree is neither automatic proof of competence nor the only route to it. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management describes the approach as evaluating ability to perform work through tools such as job simulations, skills tests, and structured assessments that reflect the role’s needs (OPM’s skills-based hiring FAQ).
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This is not a rule to ignore qualifications. A degree or license can remain necessary when law, a qualification standard, safety requirements, or the actual work justifies it. OPM’s federal guidance distinguishes the method used to select among candidates from the qualifications a role requires; its federal rules do not automatically govern private employers. Employers should check applicable federal, state, local, sector-specific, licensing, and collective-bargaining requirements.
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1. Define the work and essential competencies
Start with the outcomes the new hire must deliver and the tasks involved. For each important task, identify the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to perform it. Separate essential requirements from preferences, and document any legal, licensing, or safety qualification that cannot be removed.
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2. Rewrite the job description
Describe capabilities and outcomes in concrete terms, then explain how applicants can demonstrate them. Remove degree and years-of-experience filters when they are only proxies for ability and have no defensible connection to performance. If a credential is required, state why and distinguish it from qualifications that are merely preferred.
3. Choose a small number of job-related assessments
Match each assessment to a real requirement. A practical task is often best evaluated with a work sample or simulation; a structured interview can assess reasoning, communication, or judgment; and a skills test can efficiently measure defined knowledge when it is valid for the role. Do not rely solely on candidates’ self-ratings.
| Method | Useful for | Design consideration |
|---|---|---|
| Work sample or job simulation | Seeing how a candidate handles a task resembling the job | Keep the exercise representative, accessible, and proportionate in time; score it with defined criteria. |
| Structured interview | Assessing judgment, reasoning, communication, or experience consistently | Ask candidates comparable questions and use a shared scoring rubric. |
| Skills test | Measuring specified knowledge or a discrete skill | Confirm that the test measures a genuine role requirement and is validated for that use. |
No method is best for every job. Compare options by how directly they sample work, scoring consistency, accessibility and accommodations, candidate burden, potential adverse impact, administration effort, and whether results relate to the outcomes the organization values. OPM’s hiring materials describe these assessment approaches, and its AI guidance emphasizes that tools should be validated and job-related (OPM assessment strategy guidance; OPM assessment and selection policy).
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Set scoring criteria before reviewing applications. Give candidates comparable instructions, time, and access to relevant information. Train interviewers to use the rubric, record evidence against each criterion, and avoid substituting general impressions for observed job-related performance.
5. Check access, fairness, and candidate burden
Provide reasonable accommodations and review pass rates at each stage for patterns that may indicate adverse impact. A selection tool should be tied to the work and reviewed carefully; EEOC’s 2010 staff discussion letter on qualification standards and disparate impact addressed a narrow question and expressly was not an official Commission opinion, so it should not be treated as a comprehensive current legal ruling (EEOC informal discussion letter).
Explain why an assessment is being used, keep it close to real work, limit unpaid assignments, and tell applicants the expected timeline. Unnecessarily complex hiring steps can burden candidates and slow decisions, as SHRM notes in its process guidance (SHRM skills-based hiring process guidance).
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6. Measure and refine the process
Track qualified applicant volume, assessment completion and pass rates, time to hire, later job performance, retention, and candidate feedback. Compare assessment results with job outcomes and revise criteria that do not prove useful or create an unjustified barrier. Treat survey comparisons as descriptive unless the evaluation design can support a causal conclusion.
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What the available employer data says
Skills-first hiring is gaining attention, but adoption remains uneven. SHRM Foundation’s 2026 publication, reporting a survey of 1,184 U.S.-based HR professionals conducted October 13–27, 2025, found that 34% of organizations often or almost always used skills-first strategies. Among organizations that rarely or never used them, 55% expressed interest in adopting them. Respondents most often cited reliance on traditional degree-focused methods and lack of established assessment tools or processes as barriers, at 29% each. These are survey findings from HR professionals, not a census of employers (SHRM Foundation skills-first hiring research).
In that same report, organizations often or always using skills-first strategies were more likely than the comparison group to report exceeding financial objectives (35% versus 27%) and positive company culture (86% versus 78%). Those associations do not establish that skills-first hiring caused the differences.
Assessment use is not new: a 2022 SHRM survey of 1,688 SHRM members found that 56% used pre-employment assessments, and among HR professionals at organizations using assessments, 79% said evaluations were as important as or more important than traditional hiring criteria. Those are historical, respondent-specific figures, not current prevalence estimates for all employers (SHRM 2022 Talent Trends).
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