You have 0 items in your cart
It’s the new reality in recruiting. Forget traditional indicia of capabilities – stuff like college degrees and experience in similar job titles – skills are now the measure of merit in talent acquisition. At least that’s what you’d have to conclude if you read the countless posts on social media or attend HR conferences. Skills-based recruiting provides a broader and more diverse set of prospects for a company’s openings, and leads to better hires and performance on-the-job.
That sounds like progress, but let’s check the facts. That’s what the concept of megashifts is all about. It involves assessing the state of a particular innovation or development in talent acquisition to see where we actually are. Unlike a megagtrend, which as the futurist John Nesbitt conceived it, is a change in direction, a megashift is a change in destination. It is the precise reality at any given point in time.
I’ve previously discussed whether or not we’ve achieved a megashift in the use of AI in recruiting and in the candidate experience. For this post, I’ll take a look at skills-based recruiting.
Before I do, however, let’s deal with the elephant in the room. Why bother to assess the true state of things? What’s the point of figuring out whether or not a megashift has occurred in this aspect or that of recruiting? The answer is as simple as it is profound. A misperception of what’s real can and frequently does cause serious mistakes.
In the case of AI, for example, misunderstanding the actual state of its application in recruiting can cause a company to rush into the acquisition of a product before the company’s stakeholders have adequately prepared for its introduction. And, in the case of the candidate experience, a misperception of reality can cause an organization to discontinue or scale back its improvement campaign leaving job seekers feeling dismissed or worse.
TAtech North America & The World Job Board Forum is the largest gathering of job board and talent technology CEOs, executives and rising stars in the North American market. Why are they there? To hear worldclass speakers and make B2B connections that can grow their business. There’s Jeff Taylor, Founder of Monster, and the latest research on the TA solutions market, and there’s Fatih Uysal, CEO of Kariyer.net, a next generation job board, and Chris Forman, Founder of Appcast talking about his experience growing a TA solutions business. Add that and more content to the meetings and discussions in the TAtech Deal Center and the Mission Pacific Beach Resort in Oceanside, California, and there’s no better way to spend a day-and-a-half! Seating is limited at the conference venue, so register today to make sure you have a spot.
First, what’s the downside of forming the wrong conclusion about a megashift in the use of skills-based recruiting? Such a misunderstanding can have a similar effect to that of a misperception of where we are with AI in recruiting. It can lead recruiters to rush into the adoption of the strategy without adequately preparing the recruiting team and the other stakeholders in the organization.
That lack of preparation, in turn, can lead to confusion, mistakes and even legal jeopardy for the employer. Indeed, as Faith Smith notes, it’s not a trivial exercise to introduce the strategy. She points out that “Some significant challenges complicate the transition to a skills-based approach. Unlike the straightforward idea of assessing skills directly, practical implementation is fraught with complications.” These include translating traditional position descriptions into skills requirements, finding appropriate assessment instruments, and dealing with the cultural implications of the change.
So, what exactly is the state of skills-based recruiting today. Well, as early as 2022, TestGorilla’s State of Skills-Based Hiring report found that a whopping 76 percent of employers use it in their hiring processes. More recently, no less an authority than SHRM cited TestGorilla again in reporting that 81 percent of employers “practiced skills-based hiring” in 2024. A reasonable conclusion, therefore, is that just about everybody is using the strategy to recruit new talent.
And yet, according to StaffingHub, “While 39% of respondents believe skills-based hiring is a key trend for next year [2025], current adoption of this approach is low (20%).” The consulting firm McKinsey & Company, in contrast, reported that the percentage of companies using the strategy increased from 40 percent in 2020 to 60 percent in 2024. Though that represents a big jump and a majority of employers (in its survey), it is far from universal or even near universal adoption.
Based on that, it’s accurate to say that skills-based hiring does, in fact, represent the future of talent acquisition, but it’s exactly that – the future, not the present. What’s happening in the present is a transition – a phase in which recruiting teams search for the best way to implement the strategy in their organization. So, while the megashift has not yet occurred, we are well past early adoption with skills-based recruiting, and the time has come for recruiters to get on with it.
Food for Thought,
Peter
Peter Weddle has authored or edited over two dozen books and been a columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He is the founder and CEO of TAtech: The Association for Talent Acquisition Solutions.
