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Post a JobDid you know that skills-first hiring doubles your chances of finding quality candidates? This approach involves sourcing, screening and hiring candidates based on skills and competencies required for the job.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to implement skills-first hiring on Indeed.
Skills-first hiring focuses on whether a candidate has the right skills for a role regardless of how they gained them. Instead of screening job seekers based on degrees, years of experience or unrelated background checks, this approach evaluates candidates based on whether they have the skills to do the job.
Shifting to a skills-first mindset opens the door to job seekers who might otherwise be overlooked, including STARs (job seekers Skilled Through Alternative Routes). STARs are individuals who have built their expertise outside a degree program, whether through on-the-job learning, military service, career shifts, short-term trainings or apprenticeships.
STARs make up half of the adult workforce. However, these job seekers may get screened out in applicant tracking systems (ATSs), due to rigid hiring filters that businesses sometimes use. Expanding your definition of what makes a candidate “qualified” could help you connect with this untapped talent and experience the potential benefits of skills-first hiring.
Swapping a traditional hiring approach for a skills-first hiring method may help you:
Shifting your organization’s hiring mindset towards a skill-first approach is a great first step in learning how to adopt skills-first hiring practices. Key to this approach is being able to identify roles that require in-demand skills, rather than degree qualifications.
Download Indeed’s Hiring for Soft Skills Cheatsheet
In this next section, we’ll explore how to identify these roles. We’ll then follow up with tips for writing a skills-first job description.
Before implementing a skills-first hiring approach, identify roles that will benefit most from re-credentialing (i.e., the process of defining and assessing the skills truly needed for success rather than relying on degrees as a proxy).
When identifying roles suitable for this process, consider focusing on the following to maximize impact:
Once you’ve identified skills integral to the role you’re hiring for, it’s time to write a skills-first job description. Learn how in this next step.
Traditional job posts often focus on degrees, job titles and a certain number of years of industry experience, but this may screen out candidates who have the right skills.
A skills-first job description emphasizes the specific skills needed for the role from day one. This approach attracts candidates who possess the necessary skills, regardless of how or where they acquired them. Additionally, it uses inclusive language to welcome applicants from all backgrounds.
To write a skills-first job description, consider the following:
Rethink your job requirements by identifying the skills, knowledge and competencies you need for the job on day one. This can help you distinguish which skills are necessary vs which skills can be taught. Replace proxies with the precise skills that are needed.
Consider describing specific tasks and expectations to help job seekers understand how their skills might apply to your open role. To do this, it can help to detail what the person will actually be doing for the job.
Additionally, avoid jargon and biased terms that may discourage quality candidates from applying.
A degree or previous industry experience isn’t always a key indicator of a candidate’s ability to perform a job. In fact, more employers are moving away from requiring formal education credentials. Not only that but on Indeed, 2 million job seekers searched[1] for “no college degree required” jobs between January 2023 and June 2023.
Searching for previous industry experience can also rule out candidates with training or transferable skills that closely match the role.
We recommend using inclusive key phrases, such as “no degree” and “no high school diploma.” Since job applicants have the ability to search by these filters, it could be effective to optimize your job descriptions to target these searches.
Also, employers can state that applicants are encouraged to apply even if they do not have previous industry experience or degree qualifications. This can also help attract more quality candidates that might not otherwise apply.
Here are two job description introductions, one traditional and one skills-based, to show you what skills-based job descriptions might look like in practice:
Traditional job description: Marketing Coordinator
We are seeking a Marketing Coordinator with a bachelor’s degree in marketing or a related field and 3+ years of experience. The ideal candidate has strong digital marketing, content creation and social media management skills.
Skills-first job description: Marketing Coordinator
We are looking for a Marketing Coordinator who can create engaging content, run digital campaigns and analyze marketing data. No degree or years of experience are required, but candidates with experience creating content, analyzing social media performance and supporting brand strategy are strongly encouraged to apply.
Required skills:
Preferred skills:
Changing the way you write job descriptions may take some practice. Once you’ve identified the skills required for the job, consider using Indeed’s AI Job Description Generator to help speed up the process.
To further increase your chances of matching with the right candidates for the job, you can also sponsor your job on Indeed. This increases your job post’s visibility and can help you reach candidates faster. In fact, Sponsored Jobs posted directly on Indeed have 4.1X more applications than non-sponsored jobs.[2]
A skills-first approach can make it easier to connect with quality candidates. In fact, Indeed Smart Sourcing allows employers to filter based on skills listed in candidates’ resumes. Through Smart Sourcing, you instantly receive a list of candidates who match your job criteria.
Once you click on a candidate’s profile, you’ll see an AI-powered summary that gives you a snapshot of their relevant skills and experiences. Candidate highlights help you assess a candidate’s fit with AI assistance, screening their resume and comparing it to your job description to spot any potential gaps or qualifications for your role.
Additionally, you can also use Smart Sourcing’s tools to help you with skills-first candidate searches. Simply input desired skills into our keyword search and use the custom skills filter to get specific results. You can save your skills-first searches and get alerts to see daily newly-matched candidates.
If you’re hiring for multiple roles or need to fill positions quickly, Hiring Events can also help. These events use skills-based sourcing and evaluation tools to help you assess and engage top talent at scale.
Understanding how to evaluate candidates on Indeed can help you make informed hiring decisions. Indeed offers tools, such as screener questions (available to paid job posts) and AI-powered candidate highlights to support this.
Screener questions, which are available with a paid job post, can help you assess a candidate’s skills upfront so you can focus on those who meet your job’s requirements. When screening candidates, the key is to focus on skills. Instead of screening candidates based on degrees or years of experience, screener questions may also reflect which skills matter for the job. You can write the questions yourself or use pre-made screener questions on Indeed.
Here are some tips to help you choose the right screener questions:
Think about what a candidate needs to know on day one and consider making those skills required. This could be clearly indicated as a screener question by asking, for example: “Do you have experience using project management software to manage deadlines?”
Some skills can be learned on the job, so consider keeping certain requirements flexible. For skills that candidates could learn on the job, you could ask: “Are you familiar with [preferred tool or skill], or are you open to learning it?”
If the job requires certifications, software knowledge or industry experience, ask directly. For a screener question, you could ask:
Behavioral interview questions assume that an individual’s past workplace behavior is a reliable indicator of their future performance.
Open-ended questions about past behavior can give insight into problem-solving and communication skills. A screener question to assess this might be:
Once your job is posted, you can filter applications based on candidate responses to your screener questions. Those that don’t meet your required skills qualifications are automatically placed in the “Rejected” tab, but you can still review them at any time.
Yes, you can filter applicants based on their skills, experience and responses to skill-related screening questions.
To measure the success of skills-first hiring, consider tracking these key performance indicators (KPIs):
Yes, in some circumstances a degree or specific experience may be required for your role. By putting skills first, you ensure that you are assessing the requirements based on skills and adding other requirements only when necessary.
While Indeed Assessments are no longer available, you can still evaluate candidates’ skills using screening questions in job postings. This lets you set required and preferred skills and filter applicants based on relevant qualifications.
You also have the flexibility to come up with your own ways to assess skills specific to the role, such as:
Shifting to skills-first hiring can help you connect with a wider pool of quality candidates and speed up the hiring process.
By not eliminating potential candidates due to a lack of diploma or industry experience, you open your organization up to all job seekers who have what you need most: the right skills.
Get started with skills-first hiring by posting a job today.
This article is based on product information available at the time of writing, which may change at any time. Indeed does not guarantee that this information is always up-to-date. Please seek out your CS/Sales rep for the latest on this topic.
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