Beyond Degrees: A Skills-First Mindset

Sometimes, the biggest challenge is not knowing where to start. This was the case at Coastal Plain Area Economic Opportunity Authority Inc., a Georgia-based nonprofit that promotes economic development, when it came to attracting enough quality candidates to its door.

Dr. Tanya Thomas, Coastal Plain’s executive director, realized she had to change the way her team approached the hiring process. After much discussion, the organization discovered that the biggest barrier to entry was its requirement that candidates for many roles must have college degrees.

“ We decided to work on our job descriptions to hire more skills-based candidates within our agency,” Thomas said. “The challenge was that we had to try to streamline our job descriptions to match that.”

The results were swift and telling. After removing degree requirements from job descriptions, her team soon noticed an increase in applications. This was a big win for growing jobs within their local community while also fulfilling Coastal Plain’s organizational needs.

The Talent Shortage Dilemma

Thomas is not alone in her story. As the business world undergoes unprecedented shifts, the future of workforce development has landed squarely on the agenda of executives. The accelerating pace of technology, an increasing demand for new or evolving skills, and a competitive talent marketplace have come together to create a unique set of challenges for employers. Among these is a growing need for companies to rethink traditional hiring practices that may no longer be serving their evolving workforce needs.

In both the short term and the long term, U.S. organizations are facing a clear shortage of workers, driven by Baby Boomer retirements, declining birth rates, and a shrinking working-age population. Looking at data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS’) Job Openings and Labor Force Turnover Survey (JOLTS), the ratio of unemployed people to job openings has remained below 1.0 in recent years. That means the number of job openings is consistently running higher than the number of unemployed people who are actively looking for work.

In February 2025, there were nearly 500,000 more job openings in the U.S. than there were unemployed people, according to the BLS. Even if it were possible to match every unemployed person with a job opening, a significant number of positions would remain unfilled, underscoring a critical challenge in meeting workforce demands. What’s more, this trend is expected to continue for the foreseeable future.

According to SHRM’s 2025 Talent Trends report, more than two-thirds of organizations (69%) reported having difficulty recruiting for any full-time regular positions in the past year. Among organizations experiencing recruiting difficulties, 51% said this was due to a low number of applicants.

Yet, despite these challenges, restricted hiring practices remain rooted in many organizations.

The Case for Skills-First Hiring

Talent shortages continue to be a barrier for businesses, stalling growth, innovation, and competitive positioning, as has the need for new skills. According to SHRM’s 2025 Talent Trends report, 1 in 4 organizations said that full-time positions they’ve hired for in the past year have required new skills. Compounding matters, more than 3 in 4 of these organizations reported difficulty finding qualified individuals for these roles.

One increasingly popular approach to expand pools of potential candidates is to implement skills-first hiring. A skills-first hiring strategy means evaluating candidates based on their skills and competencies, regardless of where they accumulated them. The candidate’s ability to perform the role-specific tasks takes precedence.

This strategy can help organizations broaden their talent pipelines, improve diversity, and remain agile in a fast-evolving business landscape. According to the Talent Trends report, 76% of the organizations that eliminated degree requirements for certain positions said they had successfully hired at least one candidate who would have previously been deemed unqualified for their position.

Skills-first hiring is a strategic talent solution. Only 39% of U.S. residents ages 25 and older hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This leaves 61% of the population — many of whom possess valuable skills and experience — excluded from consideration at organizations with strict degree requirements.

Notably, an overreliance on degrees has two significant downsides:

1. It disqualifies skilled candidates who gained their expertise through alternative routes, such as skilled credentials, apprenticeships, or self-directed learning.
2. It reinforces barriers to diversity by excluding nontraditional candidates who might bring fresh perspectives and problem- solving approaches.

To address persistent talent shortages, organizations can shift their focus toward identifying the skills truly needed to do the job. Yet, many employers struggle with putting this approach into practice. Luckily, HR executives can use their knowledge and insights to lead the way. 

Putting Knowledge into Practice

To better understand which combination of tools and training can best help employers shift toward a skills-first hiring future, SHRM and the SHRM Foundation piloted a skills-first training program with 20 employers over the course of eight months. The participating organizations came from diverse industries, organization sizes, and readiness levels. The goal was to identify scalable solutions that could be implemented effectively across organizations with differing resources and capacities.

The 20 participating employers were divided into three cohorts to test the program’s effectiveness at three different levels of support and assistance:

• Unassisted: a self-directed skills-first program with resources you can use when needed.
• Technology-assisted: a self-directed group along with technology-based guidance and all the resources available to the unassisted group.
• Fully assisted: a guided skills-first program with regular coaching check-ins, plus all the tools from the first two groups.

Additionally, all three cohorts participated in monthly community of practice meetings specific to their group.

The pilot program revealed insights that are essential for any leader interested in advancing skills-first practices within their organization. Among those insights.

INSIGHT No. 1: The Right Tools Support Implementation

Skills-first hiring solutions don’t have to be resource-intensive to drive impact. Low-touch initiatives, when backed by strong organizational commitment, also deliver progress. It can be helpful to have a go-to resource when shifting to skills-first hiring. One employer in the pilot program noted that SHRM’s Ready for Success toolkit laid out the fundamentals of the skills-first move.

“It helped to shift the narrative and open the mind for a broader, more diverse and equitable way to look at recruiting,” said Sharon Van Pelt, employee engagement and experience coordinator at Call2Recycle, a battery recycling firm. “It offered a lens into parts of the real world that may be forgotten simply because they don’t fit into a traditional box. It kept a bit of humanity in the way we approached recruiting, reminding us of why we do what we do in the first place.”

These go-to tools led Coastal Plain to implement specific behavior-based questions in their interview process. These were questions Thomas and her team hadn’t previously thought to ask, and the change made a significant impact on understanding whether candidates were the right fit for their organization’s roles. Handing off these specific questions to their hiring managers helped filter out candidates who didn’t have the necessary “soft skills.”

“The behavioral questions have really shaped the way we interview now and look at the application and the candidates,” said Thomas, who added that the strategy helped Coastal Plain successfully place five new hires in the organization, improving the organization’s productivity.

Over the course of SHRM’s eight-month pilot program, employers across all three levels of support showed clear progress in adopting a skills-first hiring process. Prior to the program, 75% of participating employers identified “lack of direction” as a barrier preventing their organization from fully considering nondegreed candidates. After participating in the pilot, that figure dropped to only 35%. This finding is of particular importance for employers seeking to integrate skills-first practices in a cost-efficient way, proving that progress doesn’t always require heavy resource investments — sometimes, all that is needed is smart, strategic alignment.

INSIGHT No. 2: Job Postings Can Be Catalysts for Change

Updating job descriptions to focus on skills rather than degrees was a key strategy for many employers in the pilot. This approach led many participants to see a surge in applicant numbers and reach a broader range of candidates.

“The challenges we were facing were low application numbers for critical positions and not enough qualified staff based on our listed qualifications,” said a service-sector employer who participated in the pilot program. “We started by revising our job descriptions to highlight knowledge, skills, and abilities in a way that allowed our applicants to be able to see what our goals were. After we made this change for our most recently posted job position, we saw a major increase in applicants.”

Throughout the pilot, the 20 employers’ share of job postings that featured relevant skilled credentials collectively jumped from 25% to 58%. At the same time, the share of postings requiring traditional degrees fell from 34% to 18%. These shifts highlight the strategic value of routinely revisiting and updating job descriptions to identify and remove outdated or unnecessary qualifications that are restricting companies’ access to talent, paving the way to ultimately expand access to a broader candidate pool.

Case in point: A retail company revamped the job description for its manager-on-duty position to emphasize transferable leadership skills rather than years of retail experience. The result? The company reduced turnover for this position by 45%, and job abandonment dropped by 50%.

INSIGHT No. 3: Internal and External Collaborations Are Key

Collaboration between internal team members is pivotal for the continuity and success of these initiatives. One lesson learned from the pilot was that when participants left their organizations — whether through turnover or role changes — the lack of a co-champion for the skills-first initiative often disrupted implementation efforts. Likewise, peer-to-peer discussions, such as implementing monthly community of practice sessions, played a key role in pilot employers maintaining momentum, offering participants valuable opportunities to learn, engage, and network with fellow employers in their group while also benefitting from their support.

Part of this process of getting an internal team on board means getting managers to recognize the opportunity to hire with a skills-first mindset.

“The challenge that we encountered is that when we’re recruiting and hiring, managers think within a box. ... Part of that is looking outside of the usual formats and lanes that we would look to hire,” a service-sector participant said. “We’ve expanded where we’re looking. We’re looking at veterans, we’re looking at women who are coming back to the workforce who may have temporarily left because they were taking care of a family, or retirees who have come back into the workforce.”

Another example of a successful collaboration occurred at Coastal Plain when the organization received stakeholder buy-in to introduce an employer-funded credential for its child care program. Thanks to the change, new hires who came into the organization as subcontractors could now gain qualifications on the job.

Organizational initiatives thrive on continuity, and skills-first hiring is no exception. To drive the success of skills-first strategies, alignment across executive leadership, HR, and hiring managers is critical.

5 Steps for Building a Skills-First Action Plan

Now, it’s time to turn those insights into action. Here are five ways to kick-start your talent strategy plan by enhancing your organization’s hiring process to meet the demands of today’s workforce.

1. Recognize that the right tools do not have to be resource-intensive.

Costs of implementation are a key consideration for organizations exploring any new investments or initiatives. The lesson of the SHRM pilot was that starting a skills-first hiring journey does not have to be expensive. Free resources, such as the SHRM Foundation’s Ready for Success toolkit, offer practical, step-by-step guidance to help organizations implement skills-based hiring without significant expenses.

2. Prioritize skills-first hiring as part of your growth strategy.

Effective implementation of skills-first hiring requires both prioritization and commitment. Organizations must intentionally set aside resources and actively integrate these strategies into their operations, avoiding the risk of deprioritization in favor of other competing needs over time. Just as with other strategic initiatives, making skills-first hiring a central pillar of your talent strategy requires sustained support and effort to achieve impactful, lasting results.

3. Understand that there is no one-size-fits-all approach.

For the best results, spend time thinking through unique challenges your organization may be looking to solve in order to help customize these solutions to your organization’s specific needs. Key considerations include HR capacity, organization size, and available resources. A strategic, customized approach ensures these efforts integrate seamlessly into broader organizational goals.

 For those seeking a starting point, the SHRM Foundation’s Skilled Credentials Action Planner offers valuable support, leveraging technology to assess readiness, guide change management, and develop a tailored workplan for successfully adopting skills-first hiring practices.

4. Create a long-term vision by starting small.

Focus first on achieving and celebrating small wins. Prioritize smaller steps that can alleviate concerns and hesitations that your organization might have about implementing skills-first hiring strategies. Highlighting the benefits of these smaller successes can help build confidence and showcase the potential impact of these initiatives.

Try focusing on a single department or a critical role where your organization is facing a talent shortage. By establishing incremental and early successes, you can help make the case for expanding skills-first hiring practices across more departments and teams. As confidence grows, so does the potential for larger-scale changes.

5. Engage peer networks.

Engaging with leaders at other organizations that have successfully implemented — or are actively pursuing — skills-first hiring strategies can offer valuable opportunities to exchange insights and proven approaches. Leveraging these peer connections can deliver actionable strategies for addressing potential challenges and strengthening your own initiatives.

Skills-first hiring is not just an HR matter, it’s a business imperative. By approaching skills-first hiring with deliberate action, prioritization, and commitment, organizations can remain ahead of the curve when it comes to finding the right talent.