Hiring glossary
What is skills-based hiring?
Skills-based hiring is an approach to recruitment that selects people on evidence that they can do the work, and treats degrees, job titles and years of experience as secondary.
In practice it changes three things. Job descriptions list the skills the role needs in place of credential requirements. Screening looks for evidence of those skills, such as a work sample or job simulation, in place of résumé keyword filters. Interviews and scorecards are built on the same skill list, so every stage measures the same things.
The approach opens the applicant pool to people who learned on the job, through bootcamps or in another industry, and makes each decision easier to explain because it rests on evidence tied to the role. It depends on defining the skills carefully: a vague skill list produces a vague assessment.
Also called: skills-first hiring.
Example
A company removes the degree requirement from its junior data analyst posting, lists SQL, spreadsheet modelling and clear written summaries as the required skills, and asks every applicant to complete a short analysis task before the phone screen.
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