Understanding skills-first hiring in tech

Skills-first hiring, also called skills-based hiring, is a recruitment approach that focuses on specific skills and competencies. Traditional recruitment methods focus on education, job titles and past employers, which may exclude quality candidates from the hiring process.

In contrast, skills-based hiring emphasizes practical abilities, so it can help your company address significant skill gaps. This hiring strategy can also help you attract more applicants for each job opening.

When a company uses traditional hiring models, it’s easy to overlook capable candidates who don’t have conventional credentials. In the tech industry, focusing on a candidate’s ability to perform and adapt is essential for finding quality team members.

Prioritizing skills over credentials

Transitioning to skills-first hiring doesn’t mean you have to focus on skills and nothing else. In fact, balancing skills with experience can help you find candidates who are well-suited to the ever-changing demands of the tech industry. For example, if a candidate’s résumé mentions skill in troubleshooting hardware problems, you can inquire about how much experience they have with specific types of hardware.

A candidate’s experience doesn’t necessarily have to come from previous employment. Certain life experiences are relevant in professional settings, so you may want to consider interviewing candidates with transferable skills. For instance, someone who builds computers as a hobby may have the skills necessary to install graphics cards, reformat hard drives and perform other IT Technician duties.

The shift to skills-based hiring practices

Companies are increasingly turning to skills-based hiring to meet changing market demands. This is especially true in tech talent acquisition. Focusing on skills can help you unlock potential within your workforce, increase innovation and promote effective collaboration. It may also reduce the amount of time it takes to find quality applicants.

Skills-based hiring in the tech industry can help you find candidates, with or without formal education, who align closely with job demands. This strategy can also increase fairness in the hiring process, so it can better support your efforts to build a diverse, inclusive workplace.

Benefits of skills-first hiring in tech

Skills-first hiring for Software Engineers, IT Specialists and other tech roles has several benefits, including increased recruitment efficiency and enhanced innovation. Focusing on skills instead of formal credentials reduces the amount of time spent screening applications and assessing candidates, so it can help increase productivity while limiting the resources needed to meet your hiring goals.

When you focus on skills instead of education, you also have more opportunities with creative candidates who excel at product development, UX design and other tech functions. Innovation involves transforming creative ideas into practical solutions, so focusing on creativity may help your company more than focusing on formal education:

Enhanced workforce agility

Skills-first hiring can help you increase workforce agility, making it easier to adapt to industry trends. For example, if your company transitions to a cloud application, you may need to hire an employee with verifiable skills in using the application to drive business growth. In this case, focusing on skills can help you find an employee to help your team adapt to the new application.

In the tech industry, the demand for certain skills shifts quickly. Software updates, faster processors and artificial intelligence (AI) developments may make it necessary to change your strategy in weeks or months instead of years. Skills-first hiring helps companies meet these challenges with increased efficiency.

Better talent retention

Skills-based hiring also has a positive effect on employee retention rates. When candidates have the skills they need for their roles, they’re more likely to feel confident about their place in your organization.

Prioritizing skills also promotes better collaboration and communication, which may improve the employee experience. For example, emphasizing problem-solving skills during the hiring process may help you find team members who excel at identifying the root causes of tech problems and working with other people to solve them.

Implementing skills-first hiring practices

If you shift to skills-first hiring, it’s helpful to define the essential roles of each job before taking other steps. New employees should have essential skills on their first day of work. Examples include strong interpersonal communication skills and the ability to use Microsoft Office to perform work tasks. If new hires have these skills, you can train them to follow company policies and procedures.

Consider having a committee review your company’s job descriptions and compile a list of essential skills for each role. Once you identify essential skills, you may want to provide additional training to Recruiters and Hiring Managers. Additional training may make it easier for other people involved in the hiring process to determine if candidates have the essential skills you need.

Updating job descriptions

If you shift to skills-first hiring, it’s helpful to update your company’s job descriptions to focus on skills instead of formal education. When possible, consider removing two-year and four-year degree requirements, as it may cause you to overlook quality candidates. You may want to focus on essential competencies and soft skills rather than creating long lists of required skills.

Conducting skills assessments

Skills assessments can help verify that a candidate has the skills listed in their application materials. They also give candidates the opportunity to demonstrate their strengths. To increase accuracy, consider using at least two objective assessments for each job.

An objective assessment is measurable and unbiased. For example, if you administer a typing assessment, you can measure the output in words per minute (WPM). This assessment is objective because it doesn’t rely on the opinions of interviewers and other team members. You can easily rank candidates according to their WPM scores.

To help ensure you have an adequate candidate pool, consider adjusting the settings on your applicant-tracking system (ATS) to prioritize skills instead of formal credentials. Completing this step can help you avoid screening out candidates before you have an opportunity to evaluate their skills.

Leveraging technology and data analysis

You might want to incorporate AI and other types of technology into your skills-first hiring strategy. AI tools analyze large volumes of data much faster than usual, so they can help increase recruitment efficiency. Data analysis may make it easier to find actionable insights as it supports a skills-based hiring strategy by matching candidates to job openings based on skills and competencies.

Key skills needed in the tech industry

Employees in the tech industry need a balanced combination of technical skills and soft skills. Technical skills are the skills needed to perform specific tasks. For example, you might need a Database Administrator who knows how to use MySQL to create relational databases.

Soft skills are the skills needed in all professions, from a Cloud Computing Engineer to an Application Developer. Communication skills are considered soft skills because they’re used in every job. Tech employees at all levels may have to write reports, explain technical concepts to end users, give presentations or perform other communication tasks.

You might also want to look for employees with trainable skills, which are skills that a team member can develop on the job if they have the right training and support. Providing additional training can help you make your hiring program more flexible.

Technical expertise

In the tech industry, technical expertise ensures team members can adapt to changing demands. Consider hiring employees with these technical skills:

• Python
• C++
• JavaScript
• Amazon Web Services (AWS)
• Google Cloud
• Microsoft Azure
• Cybersecurity (e.g., risk management and encryption)

Soft skills

Your organization may benefit from hiring tech employees with a broad range of soft skills. For example, an IT Technician can use their organizational skills to prioritize support tickets. Tech employees may also use the following soft skills:

• Time management
• Teamwork
• Collaboration
• Critical thinking
• Problem-solving
• Creativity
• Adaptability

Overcoming challenges in skills-first hiring

Transitioning to skills-based hiring requires a shift away from focusing on formal education. Some employers have been requiring degrees or other formal credentials for decades, so resistance to change is a common challenge. HR teams also have some concerns regarding increasing fairness and reducing bias. Implementing practical strategies can help you overcome these challenges.

Resistance to change

Traditional hiring practices may be embedded in your company culture, causing some employees to resist new initiatives. Gaining support from team members can help you convince them to embrace the change instead of resisting it. Consider applying the principles of change management to transition from traditional hiring methods to skills-based hiring.

Effective change management involves identifying your goals, preparing team members for the change, implementing your new plan and performing a post-implementation review. This review helps determine what went right and what you can improve for the future.

Ensuring fairness and reducing bias

Using objective assessments isn’t the only way to ensure fairness in a skills-based hiring process. When you update your company’s job descriptions, consider using rich skill descriptors instead of objective criteria. For example, if you need a Help Desk Technician capable of handling a certain number of tickets per hour, you might want to include “ability to process at least five tickets per hour.”

“Ability to process tickets quickly” can be considered subjective because it relies on personal opinions instead of objective data. One person might view five tickets per hour as well above average, while another views five tickets per hour as below the minimum standard.

Future trends in skills-first hiring

As skills-first hiring evolves to better meet the needs of employers, it might be helpful to incorporate ontologies into your recruitment program. An ontology is a set of categories or concepts in a specific domain. In recruitment, a skills ontology makes it easier to identify skill gaps, assess candidates and align your workforce with your company’s needs.

Continuous learning and development

The technology industry changes quickly, so it’s helpful to emphasize continuous learning in the workplace. Consider creating a culture of ongoing education to help employees understand the importance of learning new skills and concepts. This type of culture helps team members adopt relevant skills in a fast-paced environment. It can also help them improve their problem-solving abilities.

AI and automation in recruitment

Automation increases efficiency in recruitment by minimizing how long it takes to screen applications and match applicants with open roles. AI tools can also identify suitable candidates based on their skills instead of degrees. You might want to use these tools for initial screening, as they exclude irrelevant demographic data.

Skills-first hiring empowers tech companies to bridge talent gaps, boost agility, foster innovation and improve retention by prioritizing verifiable competencies over traditional credentials. By updating job descriptions, using objective assessments, leveraging AI and promoting continuous learning, you can build adaptable teams ready for rapid industry change.