Skills based hiring has become a default talking point in corporate talent strategy. Degrees are “no longer required” and job ads talk confidently about capabilities, not credentials. But if you look at who is actually getting through the funnel, pedigree still holds all the keys.
Most organisations have layered skills assessments 'over’ existing filters rather than redesigning hiring around skills. The reality is that the new model largely keeps traditional shortcuts in place and, in a cooling labour market, gives employers a respectable language to slow or narrow hiring.
Helping HR, talent acquisition, employer branding, and company culture professionals find careers worth smiling about.
What I’m often seeing:
- Degree requirements may disappear from some job ads, but preferred schools and employers remain powerful informal filters.
- Skills assessments are often a final gate for already favoured candidates, not an opening for non-traditional talent - as touted.
- In a market shaped by layoffs and “realignment”, skills language can conveniently double as a justification for pumping the breaks on hiring.
- CVs, ATS rules and AI screeners still reward pedigree, while alternative proof of skills rarely counts at the top of the funnel.
- A genuine shift to skills-based hiring means redesigning roles, screening, manager habits and internal mobility, not just adding a test – but there is little evidence of any of this.
Skills based hiring was meant to replace pedigree. Mostly, it has just moved in next door.
Skills based hiring has a clean logic to it.
If you care most about what people can actually do, you should care less about where they went to university or which logo appears on their CV. In theory, that is exactly what employers are now promising: degrees are “nice to have”, but not mandatory, what truly matters are competencies, potential and proof of work.
The language sounds modern, fair, and based in merit. The experience on the ground, however, is more familiar.
Degree lines might quietly vanish from job descriptions but hiring managers still sort candidates into tiers based on school lists, former employers and referrals from recognisable networks. Skills based hiring, in many cases, has not replaced those instincts. It has been added on top.
The result for candidates is not the level playing field they expected. It is the old game, plus a new exam at the end.
The promise: skills first, not school first
There is a real story underneath the hype.
Over the past decade, more large employers have started removing formal degree requirements from at least some roles. HR teams talk seriously about “STARs” talent, those skilled through alternative routes. Industry groups champion apprenticeships, bootcamps and on the job learning.
On paper, this should unlock a huge pool of talent that was previously screened out on day one. It should also support diversity and social mobility, because degree requirements fall hardest on people from lower income and underrepresented backgrounds.
It is hard to argue against the principle. Few leaders will stand up in public and defend pure credentialism.
The question is not whether skills-based hiring is a good idea in theory. The question is how far organisations have actually moved in practice. (spoiler, it’s not very far)
The reality: policies moved, talent pipelines mostly did not
When you read beyond the headlines, the picture is less dramatic.
Many companies have updated job description templates and removed standard degree lines. Fewer have changed their sourcing, screening and decision making in ways that meaningfully alter who gets hired.
The symptoms show up quickly if you ask a few basic questions:
- Has the proportion of non-degree hires actually increased in critical roles?
- Are more candidates coming from non-traditional schools, employers or routes?
- Do pass rates on assessments look similar for people with and without classic pedigree?
In many organisations, those numbers are flat. What has changed is the language, not the intake.
That disconnect matters, because it turns a hopeful narrative about access into another example of “say one thing, do another” in the labour market.
Momentum isn’t always progress, especially when you always end up back where you started.
Fathom helps you escape the loop. With insight, not intuition.
Skills as a bolt on, not a redesign
A common pattern that I see looks like this:
- Traditional filters first. Initial screening still leans heavily on past employer brand, school name, job titles and neat, linear career paths.
- Skills evidence later. Only once candidates clear all those informal pedigree gates do they see work samples, coding tests, case studies or task-based interviews.
In other words, skills are rarely used to widen the pool. They are used to narrow it at the end.
For candidates who lack the classic CV markers, the skills story feels hollow. If you never make it past automated scoring or a quick human scan of your education and employer list, it does not matter how strong your portfolio is. No one sees it.
Skills based hiring, done this way, becomes a finishing school for pedigree. The same people are shortlisted, they just have to jump through one more hoop before getting hired.
A convenient excuse in a cooling market
Call me a cynic but the timing doesn’t feel accidental.
Skills based language has surged during a period marked by:
- rolling layoffs in tech and other white-collar sectors
- “silent firing” and quiet performance pressure
- “workforce realignment” and role consolidation
- reduced entry level hiring in many corporate functions
When headcount is under pressure, a rhetoric of precision can be helpful. “We are looking for a specific blend of skills” sounds a lot cleaner than “We are slowing hiring and not quite sure what we will need next.”
Skills based hiring can easily drift from inclusion strategy to brake pedal:
- Job ads stay open longer while teams hunt for the mythical perfect skills mix.
- Offers are delayed or cancelled because the “skills profile” has changed.
- Business leaders use skills language to justify backfilling only some of the roles lost to restructuring.
Of course, not every organisation is acting in bad faith. Many are genuinely trying to modernise hiring while coping with volatility. This is the business reality, it’s tough out there, and businesses are doing what they can. I get it. But without transparency, “skills” risks becoming a respectable gloss on cost cutting and risk aversion.
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The evidence problem: proving skills when no one reads past the CV
If employers really want to hire on skills, two things must change. First, they need better signals about what people can actually do. Second, they need systems that give more people a chance to show those signals. Most current processes struggle on both fronts.
CVs still carry the weight
CVs are a notoriously weak proxy for skills. They mostly show:
- where someone has studied
- which employers have previously screened them in
- how well they know the unwritten rules of white-collar presentation
They rarely prove how someone thinks, learns, adapts, collaborates or solves unfamiliar problems. Yet in many ATS setups, the CV is still the only structured input at the top of the funnel.
ATS and AI tend to learn yesterday’s favourites
Screening tools are often built or trained on past hiring decisions. If your historical hires mostly came from a narrow set of universities, geographies or employer brands, the model learns those patterns and treats them as quality signals.
So even after you have removed formal degree requirements, your software hasn’t and keeps rewarding familiar credentials.
The loop is this:
- Candidates from certain schools or brands are far more likely to be surfaced and advanced.
- They become a larger share of “successful” hires.
- Future models weight their profiles more heavily, and the cycle continues.
Against that backdrop, “skills-based hiring” that relies mainly on keyword matching in CVs is a lot less likely to produce a different result.
Helping HR, talent acquisition, employer branding, and company culture professionals find careers worth smiling about.
What real skills-based hiring would look like
If organisations genuinely want to move beyond pedigree, skills cannot be something you test only at the end. They have to shape how roles are defined, how candidates enter the funnel and how decisions are made.
There are some practical shifts that point in that direction.
1. Rewrite the job, not just the press release
Start with a clear view of the work.
- Define what someone needs to deliver in the next 12 to 24 months.
- List the skills, behaviours and domain knowledge that actually support that work.
- Separate “must have to be safe and effective” from “nice to have” preferences.
- Keep degree requirements for roles where there is a clear regulatory or technical reason, and explain that reason.
This gives hiring teams a real anchor. Without it, “skills” quickly collapses back into vague impressions.
2. Change what you screen on at the top of the funnel
If your ATS still scores candidates mainly on titles, employers and education, you are not doing skills-based hiring, whatever your CHRO and careers site say.
Instead, look for ways to surface skills earlier:
- Use structured questions in the application that ask about specific tasks, tools and outcomes.
- Make portfolios, GitHub repos, writing samples or work examples first class citizens in screening, not optional extras.
- Allow candidates to self-assess key skills in a structured way, then test those claims later in the process.
The goal is not to remove judgement. It is to stop pedigree acting as the unofficial primary filter.
3. Move skills evidence earlier in the journey
Flip the standard pattern.
Rather than reserving case studies or technical tests for a small group at the end, use short, focused tasks earlier and more widely. For example:
- a 30-45 minute scenario or work sample tied directly to the role
- a short problem solving or writing task that shows how someone thinks
- situational judgement questions that test how candidates choose between trade offs
These do not have to be complex or expensive, and they should be proportionate. The point is to let more people demonstrate ability before you default to comfort criteria.
4. Build visible alternative routes
If you claim to hire for skills, your success stories and role models should reflect that.
- Profile employees who joined via apprenticeships, career changes or smaller employers, and show their work, not just their story.
- Give real weight to non-degree training, micro credentials and internal experience when shortlisting.
- Partner with community providers and reskilling organisations to create specific pathways into real jobs, not just vague “talent pools”.
This matters for employer brand as much as for fairness. Candidates notice who you celebrate.
5. Help managers let go of pedigree as a shortcut
For busy hiring managers, pedigree is a convenient risk management tool. It feels quick and safe. That habit does not change just because HR has updated job descriptions.
Practical moves include:
- Running calibration sessions where managers review de-identified profiles and discuss decisions against explicitly defined skills.
- Asking interviewers to link “no” decisions to skills criteria, rather than to vibes or gut feel.
- Making progress on skills-based hiring part of manager expectations, not just an HR side project.
The aim is not to shame individual preferences. It is to make them visible enough that teams can choose different patterns.
6. Use data to show whether anything has changed
If you do not track it, you will not know whether your shift to skills is real.
Teams can start with simple questions:
- How has the mix of educational backgrounds and prior employers changed in our hires over the last few years?
- Where in the funnel do candidates from non-traditional backgrounds drop out?
- How do skills assessment results compare across different pathways into the process?
This kind of analysis can be uncomfortable. It is also one of the few ways to tell whether you are moving beyond comforting stories.
7. Extend skills thinking beyond the hire
Skills based hiring is easiest to defend when it is part of a broader skills-based approach to the workforce.
That means:
- mapping the skills you already have in the organisation, not just the roles
- designing internal mobility and promotion around skills growth, not only job titles and tenure
- investing in learning that builds critical capabilities, instead of endlessly searching the market for “unicorns”
If skills only matter when someone is a candidate, the message to employees is clear: pedigree still wins in the long run.
Employer brand implications: promise versus proof
For employer branding and talent teams, the gap between skills rhetoric and pedigree reality is more than a messaging issue. It is a trust issue.
Candidates expect a degree of spin in corporate hiring narratives. They also talk to each other, compare notes and share experiences in reviews and social channels. If they repeatedly see:
- promises of skills-based access, alongside
- processes that still heavily reward classic credentials
They will treat skills language as the latest buzzword, not as meaningful change.
Internally, employees notice too. If promotions and high visibility assignments still skew towards familiar CVs, skills-based hiring slogans start to sound hollow. That, over time, erodes credibility and can damage culture.
The organisations that will benefit most reputationally are those that can tell a modest, specific story and back it with proof:
- here is where we have genuinely opened up roles
- here is what we changed in the process
- here is what the data shows so far, including what has not improved yet
For leaders: three uncomfortable but useful questions
For HR, TA and EB leaders, a simple test can cut through the noise. Ask:
- Where does pedigree still act as an unofficial gatekeeper in our process?
Think about school lists, former employer preferences, referral patterns and unspoken rules.
- At what stage do we first see actual evidence of skills, and who never reaches that stage?
If only a narrow slice of applicants gets to demonstrate skills, your process is not truly skills based.
- What evidence do we have that our changes have altered who we hire, not just how we describe roles?
Look for shifts in backgrounds, not just in job ad wording.
If the answers are awkward, that is useful information. It shows you where the work really is.
Skills based hiring remains a powerful idea. Used seriously, it can broaden access, uncover overlooked talent and make hiring more predictive. It can also boost organisational capability at the same time as reducing costs (pedigree can be expensive). Used as a decorative layer on top of traditional filters, it mostly adds friction for the people who were already furthest from the door.
Takeaways
Is skills based hiring actually replacing degrees in practice?
Not usually. Many employers have removed degree requirements on paper, but still treat certain schools and brands as informal requirements in screening and decision making. The system feels new while behaving much like the old one
How are companies using skills language to slow or narrow hiring?
In a market shaped by layoffs and restructuring, “looking for a very specific skills mix” can become a respectable way to delay offers or leave roles unfilled. Skills rhetoric is sometimes doing double duty as cost control language.
Why are CVs and ATS setups such a problem for skills based hiring?
CVs mainly reflect pedigree and social capital, and many ATS rules amplify that by ranking candidates on titles, employers and education. Without redesign, these tools quietly filter out non traditional talent before skills are ever assessed.
What would a genuinely skills led process look like?
Real change starts with role design, not branding. It means defining critical skills, screening on those skills early, offering short work samples to more candidates and treating portfolios and alternative training as first class evidence, not side notes.
How can hiring managers move beyond pedigree as a shortcut?
Managers need help to see where familiarity bias shows up. De-identified profile reviews, structured criteria, and clear expectations around documenting decisions against skills all make it easier to choose differently without pretending instincts do not exist.
What data should HR and TA teams track to prove progress?
Useful metrics include the mix of educational and employer backgrounds in hires, drop off points for non traditional candidates, and how skills assessment results correlate with long term performance. The aim is to see whether outcomes are changing, not just inputs.
How does this connect to employer brand and DEI?
When skills based hiring promises are not matched by lived experience, candidates and employees lose trust. Over time, that undermines claims around inclusion and social mobility and weakens the credibility of the employer brand story.
Why extend skills thinking beyond hiring into internal mobility?
If skills only matter at the door, people quickly learn that pedigree still drives progression. Mapping internal skills, investing in development and promoting based on capabilities as well as tenure helps align the external hiring story with internal reality.
Fathom
Sources
- Skills-Based Hiring: The Long Road from Pronouncements to Practice – Harvard Business School & Burning Glass Institute
- Skills-Based Hiring: The Long Road from Pronouncements to Practice – Research overview (Burning Glass Institute)
- Skills-Based Hiring: The Long Road from Pronouncements to Practice – Overview (Harvard Kennedy School)
- Employability Report: Degree Requirements & Outdated Mindsets Accelerate the Current Talent Crunch – Cengage Group
- Outdated Mindsets and Degree Stigmas: Cengage Group’s 2022 Employability Report Reveals What’s Really Causing the Talent Crunch – Cengage Group (press release)
- Nearly Half of Companies Plan to Eliminate Bachelor’s Degree Requirements – HR Dive
- Report: Employers Don’t Practice What They Preach on Skills-Based Hiring – HR Dive
- Eliminating Degree Requirements – WCI
- Bachelor’s Degrees Are No Longer Required for Many Jobs – SSTI
- Skills-Based Hiring: Where Did It Go? – Korn Ferry
- Opportunity@Work STARs Research Hub
- New Research Uncovers Untapped Pathways to Opportunity for Millions of U.S. Workers – Opportunity@Work
- About STARs – Tear the Paper Ceiling
- Can STARs Shine Without a College Degree? – U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Monthly Labor Review
- Searching for STARs: Work Experience as a Job Market Signal for Workers without Bachelor’s Degrees – NBER Working Paper
- Cengage Group Report Highlights Gaps Between Graduate Confidence, Educator Views and Workforce Needs – EdTech Innovation Hub
- Number of New UK Entry-level Jobs Has Dived Since ChatGPT Launch – The Guardian
- Entry-level Jobs Plunge by a Third Since Launch of ChatGPT – The Times
- UK Employers Cut Graduate Hiring for Second Consecutive Year, Survey Finds – Financial Times
- Jobs and Skills Australia Demands Blended Degrees to Get Graduates Fit for Work – The Australian
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