Understanding skills-first hiring in healthcare

Skills-first hiring, also known as skills-based hiring, emphasizes practical abilities instead of over-relying on formal education requirements or years of experience alone. While many healthcare roles require specific degrees or certifications to comply with regulatory standards, you can balance these requirements with candidates’ other competencies. 

To apply skills-based hiring for healthcare roles, it’s helpful to define specific job requirements before posting a job. This definition helps you understand which skills are essential for each role.

For example, if you have an opening for a phlebotomist, which is a role that does not always require a specific degree, you might want to focus on these practical requirements:

• Ability to interpret laboratory orders
• Skill in drawing blood samples
• Competence in handling blood and urine samples according to lab guidelines
• Understanding of how common medications affect blood test results
• Proficiency in explaining lab procedures to patients

The shift from focusing on degrees opens access to a wider talent pool, as candidates can develop these skills on the job or through short-term training programs. For example, military service focused on phlebotomy, on-the-job experience or vocational training may provide the knowledge needed. Skills-based hiring in healthcare also allows you to prioritize a candidate’s ability to adapt and thrive within a specific role.

You might adopt skills-based hiring for several reasons:

• Shortages in specialized roles: Some positions require a unique mix of specialized skills. By using skills-based hiring, you can find candidates with the right qualifications more efficiently.
• High turnover rates: Healthcare organizations tend to have higher turnover rates than companies in other industries. Skills-first hiring may help you reduce turnover, ensuring you have the right team to meet patients’ needs.
• Increased competition: Unless you’re the sole healthcare employer in your area, you’re competing with hospitals, private practices, urgent care centers and other facilities for employees. Skills-based hiring may make your company more attractive to prospective candidates.

Benefits of adopting a skills-first approach

Skills-first hiring for nurses, lab techs and other healthcare roles offers several benefits for employers.

Efficient recruitment process

When you use a skills-based hiring approach, you focus on the specific competencies needed for the role rather than relying solely on degrees or years of experience. This can encourage a wider range of qualified candidates to apply, including career changers who may bring valuable transferable skills. 

Removing application barriers makes it less likely that you’ll need to spend time and money on additional recruitment methods, such as online advertising, assistance from a recruitment agency or job fair attendance.

Skills-first hiring also reduces the time it takes to screen applicants. By focusing on specific skills instead of vague requirements, you can use pre-employment assessments, project-based tasks or simulations to evaluate each candidate. This limits the time you spend reading cover letters and scanning resumes.

Focusing on skills may even speed up the onboarding process. If new hires already have the skills they need for their roles, you can focus on company policies and other information specific to your organization rather than starting with basic skills training.

Finally, skills-based hiring can help reduce your hiring costs. When you emphasize skills instead of formal education, you’re less likely to need multiple recruitment cycles to fill the same position. As a result, you’re likely to pay less for advertising and other recruitment-related activities.

Improved recruitment metrics

Skills-first hiring can also improve key recruitment metrics, including time to hire, cost per hire, quality of hire and offer acceptance rate. Time to hire measures the duration between when a candidate applies for a job and when they accept an offer. Skills-based hiring makes it easier to identify quality candidates, which can reduce the time it takes to fill open roles.

Cost per hire refers to the average amount of money spent to hire a new employee. It includes both direct and indirect costs. Advertising a job opening is a direct cost, while time spent interviewing candidates is an indirect cost.

Emphasizing skills speeds up the hiring timeline, reducing the money spent on recruitment activities. This lowers the average amount spent to hire a new employee.

Quality of hire measures the value a new employee brings to the workplace. There isn’t a standard formula for calculating this metric. Instead, employers use manager surveys, post-hire assessments and other tools to gather data. For example, the direct manager or supervisor can conduct mini-reviews at 30, 60 and 90 days after a new employee’s start date.

Job acceptance rate is the percentage of candidates who accept an offer from your company. For example, if 80 out of 100 candidates accept an offer, you have a job acceptance rate of 80%. By emphasizing skills, candidates without degrees may view your company more favorably, leading them to accept your offers quickly.

Enhanced diversity and inclusion

Prioritizing skills over traditional educational backgrounds promotes inclusion and belonging in the hiring process. Not everyone has the opportunity to attend college, so focusing on skills can help you connect with candidates who might otherwise be excluded from consideration under traditional recruitment approaches.

Increased patient satisfaction

Many healthcare roles require excellent interpersonal skills. For instance, an ultrasound technician should be able to put patients at ease and explain what’s happening during each scan. If you focus on skills during the hiring process, it’s easier to find employees who excel at interpersonal communication, which may lead to increased patient satisfaction.

Key challenges in implementing skills-based hiring

Skills-first hiring has many benefits, but you may need to overcome some challenges before you can implement it successfully. One of the biggest barriers is the difficulty of integrating skills-based hiring with your existing hiring framework. You may have to rewrite many job descriptions to emphasize skills instead of formal education.

Hiring managers may also consider degrees as indicators of success, making them resistant to change. If employees are skeptical, it’s helpful to provide retraining opportunities. You may also want to explain how skills-first hiring is likely to benefit your company by having HR leaders present hiring data or examples. When employees understand the reason for change, they’re more likely to accept it.

You may also find it necessary to change how you assess candidates. If the healthcare role doesn’t require formal certifications or degrees, consider using pre-employment assessments to evaluate each person’s skills. Using objective assessments with fair evaluation criteria can help you identify quality applicants based on skills rather than educational credentials.

Employers also need to balance skills with applied experience through related roles. You may want to create new interview questions to determine how much experience each candidate has in applying their skills in a professional setting.

Redefining job requirements

More than 70 million American workers lack a college degree. In a recruitment process that prioritizes formal education, these millions of workers would be screened out regardless of their experience. You can eliminate unnecessary educational prerequisites for roles in patient relations and other departments, such as administrative or technician roles. 

Once you identify unnecessary educational requirements, you can redefine the requirements for each job. An effective job description clarifies the requirements by outlining specific skills and competencies. Identifying essential skills also helps align your hiring criteria with job functions.

Consider balancing essential skills required on day one against skills that a new hire can learn later. For example, you can train a Patient Relations Representative to follow your organization’s policies, but they need to have strong interpersonal communication skills before they start working.

Upskilling candidates who don’t meet every requirement encourages professional growth and may help improve the employee experience. This involves giving team members the opportunity to build on their existing skills.

It’s also helpful to use inclusive language in your job descriptions. Inclusive language eliminates ambiguity, making it easier for applicants to determine if they meet your requirements.

Effective skills assessments in healthcare

Once you identify essential skills, you can administer assessments designed to evaluate each candidate’s abilities. Many tools, including structured observations, multiple-choice questions and performance-based assessments, can help verify clinical competency. You may also want to incorporate peer evaluations into your assessment process. 

Simulation-based assessments are also helpful for evaluating a candidate’s clinical skills. Simulations provide candidates the opportunity to demonstrate their skills in a controlled environment. For example, if you’re hiring a Patient Care Technician, you might ask them to show how they would reposition a patient to prevent bedsores. Simulations typically use mannequins, so you don’t have to involve real patients in your hiring process.

If you decide to use new assessments, consider having them validated. This ensures that each assessment produces accurate results across different groups of people. Validation also confirms that an assessment measures the skills it claims to measure.

Building a robust skills intelligence system

A skills intelligence system uses artificial intelligence, machine learning and other technologies to analyze skills-related data. For example, you can use AI to identify skill gaps. Once you identify those gaps, your training department can develop programs designed to eliminate them. 

Skills intelligence systems also help employers align employee skills with their needs. If you don’t have any skill gaps, you can use a skills intelligence system to create personalized development paths for your employees. Continued professional development allows healthcare professionals to participate in learner-driven educational programs, giving them the opportunity to learn new skills.

Collaborating with educational institutions

Collaborating with educational institutions helps align academic training with your company’s requirements. For example, you can partner with a local college to create training programs designed to help participants learn skills that your organization lacks. 

You can also partner with career centers and vocational technical schools to create internship and apprenticeship programs. Internships usually last for one term and may cover medical billing, while apprenticeships may last several years and offer instruction for patient care technicians.

Both types of programs provide an opportunity to train participants according to company standards, which may help save time on training in the future.

Promoting continuous learning and professional development

A skills-driven organization encourages continuous learning—the ongoing process of gaining knowledge and abilities. This approach helps teams adapt to industry shifts like telehealth or AI while strengthening patient care. As employees build new skills, they improve both workplace performance and patient relationships, making continuous learning a powerful strategy for healthcare employers.

Lifelong learning doesn’t necessarily require completing formal training programs. Your employees can learn new skills by attending healthcare conferences, networking with other professionals and reading industry publications.

Continuous learning also makes it easier to address anticipated shortages in the healthcare industry. By promoting lifelong learning, you may be able to advance employees from within, as upskilling helps team members manage complex cases and utilize technology efficiently. Consider offering the following learning opportunities to your employees:

• Skills labs
• On-the-job training
• Professional mentoring
• Healthcare simulations
• Lecture series

Enhancing employee retention through skills-based hiring

One of the biggest benefits of skills-first hiring is that it can improve employee retention. When you focus on skills, it’s easier to align employee strengths with job requirements. This fosters a positive work environment, making it less likely that team members will leave the organization earlier than expected.

Revising job descriptions also has the potential to increase employee satisfaction, as new team members will know exactly what to expect. If employees feel confident in their abilities, they are more likely to stay with your organization instead of searching for employment elsewhere.