We Explain Skills-Based Hiring: What It Is & How to Implement 

For decades, the recruitment industry as a whole has leaned heavily on signaling devices—such as years of experience—as indicators for skill.

This approach not only leads to reinforced biases because someone didn’t have the “right” credentials—and the simple reality of work not getting done because someone was great on paper but floundered in the role. 

Luckily, things are starting to change…

Across both the private and public sectors, 72% of organizations are starting to recognize these issues and are slowly and steadily shifting to a skill-based hiring approach. This approach focuses on assessing a candidate's actual skills rather than relying on indirect indicators.

But what is skills-based hiring? And how can you implement it correctly? These are the questions we'll be answering in this Willo guide.

What Is Skills-Based Hiring? 

Skills-based hiring assesses a candidate’s actual capabilities, rather than traditional skill indicators like degrees, years of experience, and previous job titles. The goal is to directly compare what a candidate can deliver compared to what a role needs.

This assessment process can include:

• Technical interviews
• Case studies or assignments
• Skills assessments and tests
• Work samples or portfolios

Why Consider Skills-Based Hiring? 

Expand your talent pool 

This benefit is related to the one above. 

By prioritizing skills over traditional indicators of success, you open the door to a much wider range of candidates. For example, 66% of the American workforce doesn’t have a college degree—yet many are highly skilled and capable individuals operating successfully in their respective fields. 

Skill-based hiring allows you to cast a wider net and attract top talent that other organizations aren’t considering.

Build an agile workforce

Skill-based hiring can also help you hire candidates with specific transferable skills, such as data analysis and critical thinking. This helps you build an agile and adaptable team, particularly as AI adoption continues in hiring.

For example, a customer service representative with strong communication and problem-solving skills can potentially transition into a sales role. These transferable skills, combined with some sales training, can eventually make them successful salespeople.

Promote diversity and inclusion (D&I)

Indicators like education tend to be very intertwined with issues like discrimination, wealth inequality, and bias. As a result, non-traditional skill development paths have become an important development pathway for many.

Source: Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2024

In the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2024, for example, only 49.1%  of the 59,912 respondents selected traditional schooling as one of the ways they learned to code. The vast majority (82.1%) selected online resources, while significant numbers selected e-courses (50%) and boot camps (10.7%).

Many groups rely on these nontraditional options to break into industries like tech. And inclusivity is just one reason to consider them—they’re also very effective. Forbes found that 88% of coding boot camp grads felt confident applying their skills on the job, compared to 68% of college grads.

How to Implement Skills-Based Hiring 

1. Identify the skills you need for specific roles 

The very first step in skills-based hiring is listing specific skills and key competencies needed to succeed in each role you’re hiring for. 

Type

Definition

Examples

Specific Job Skills

Specific abilities and knowledge required to perform job-related tasks.

• Programming languages
• Data analysis
• Software proficiency
• Technical expertise

Transferable Skills

Versatile skills that are applicable across various roles.

• Data analysis
• Team management
• Project management
• Organizational skills
• Critical thinking

Soft Skills

Interpersonal abilities that influence how an individual interacts with others.

• Communication
• Teamwork
• Problem-solving
• Leadership

At this point, you need the list to be as exhaustive as possible. To get the level of detail and accuracy you need, you have to consult with some key stakeholders, including: 

• Employees (external or internal) currently in or who have previously held the role are your best source of insight since they've been there.
• Managers who oversee the positions.
• External industry experts or consultants for a broader perspective on the necessary skills and competencies.

Once you have a comprehensive list, start narrowing it down to the skills that align with your current business goals for the role.

For example, if you're hiring a marketing manager to help expand into a new region, skills like cultural sensitivity and language proficiency might top your list. On the other hand, these might not be necessary if you’re hiring a manager for local campaigns.

By the end of this step, you should have only a few highly important and necessary skills. 

2. Map out your approach

In these initial stages, it’s important to pin down not only the skills required, but how you’ll test them, what your definition of each skill is, and how important it is. It’s a lot to manage, and inconsistency can easily creep in if you’re not careful. 

To avoid this, we recommend creating a visual canvas for each role you’re hiring for. It should clearly spell out important details you’ll need in order to maintain a consistent skill-based hiring approach across three stages:

i. Candidate Attraction

• What role are you hiring for?
• How are the stakeholders involved?
• What are the ideal qualities and skills?

ii. Candidate Screening

• What are the qualities and skills you need to identify at scale?
• What questions will help you identify them?

iii. Candidate Evaluation

• How will you evaluate each quality and skill?
• How will you measure proficiency/presence? 

If you want a bit of guidance with this process, we’ve created a free downloadable CV-free design template that you can use to make sure your skill-based hiring implementation is organized from the start.

3. Write skills-based job descriptions 

To reap the rewards of skills-based hiring, your approach needs to be communicated to candidates. If it isn’t, you’re still going to see the same kinds of candidates you would if you had stuck with a traditional approach.

Your job descriptions play a huge role here.

Writing a skills-based job description can be as simple as ditching traditional requirements like degrees and years of experience. Instead, focus on giving candidates a clear idea of the skills, tools, and responsibilities they’ll need for the role.

Here’s a solid example.

Source: AppAgent 

This listing avoids all language related to degrees, certifications, and years of experience—instead, it focuses on the actual tasks an employee will need to deliver in the role. As a candidate, you can easily match your skills against the listed expectations and decide whether you’re capable of doing the job.

4. Test skills early in the hiring process

After your candidates have submitted their applications, you now need a way to narrow them down further to those who are qualified for the role (based on skills). 

Traditionally, this has meant working through resumes. However, this approach won’t be effective in skills-based hiring because a typical CV structure prioritizes signaling devices like education over task-based competencies. Further, you can write anything you want; it’s a different thing to show you can do something.

Instead, implement a skills-based candidate screening process at the top of your recruitment funnel.

There are many different ways to conduct this assessment—work submissions, role plays, async interviews, etc. But if you’re looking for a scalable, time- and cost-effective solution, async interviews are usually the way to go. 

Here’s how they work:

1. Create your questions: List out key skills and draft 1-2 questions that test candidates on their proficiency.
2. Invite candidates to participate: Share the interviews with candidates and let them record responses whenever convenient, whether that’s video, audio, or multiple-choice checkbox questions. 
3. Review responses: Review the responses at your convenience and shortlist candidates based on the quality of their answers (bonus points if you standardize this process with scorecards).

This process is much smoother if you have a reliable async interview tool. That’s where Willo comes in. We help recruiters implement async skills-based screening interviews at scale without sacrificing candidate experience or quality.

Source: How EDF Fills 400+ Roles Per Recruiting Season

EDF regularly processed hundreds of new grads per recruiting season. They needed to test for role-specific skills but didn’t want to harm candidates’ experiences. They turned to Willo and now process more than 17,000 applicants per season while reducing admin time by 50%.

How to Implement Async Skills-Based Screening With Willo

First, use our interview questions generator to generate questions based on the skills you’ve identified. Make sure you double-check with your stakeholders to ensure the questions fit the job perfectly.

Source: Create an interview 

Next, create an assessment using these questions. You have full control over settings like time per question, number of attempts, thinking time, and more. To keep things structured, fair, and unbiased, make sure you send the same interview to all candidates applying for a given role.

Source: Scorecards

Once responses start pouring in, your team can review them on a rolling basis. To make this easier, we offer collaboration tools like comments, sharing, and shortlisting. We recommend using our Scorecards feature to rate candidates based on the skills and competencies you’re testing for.

5. Conduct skill-focused interviews 

After your initial assessment, keep your skills-based hiring focus consistent in all subsequent interviews. It wouldn't make sense to start with skills and then suddenly ask where they studied in later interviews.

Here's how to get this right: 

• Train interviewers: Make sure your hiring team knows how to conduct effective skills-based interviews.
• Develop skill-focused questions beforehand: Center your interviews around the essential skills for the role. Ask candidates for specific examples of how they've used these skills in previous experiences.
• Incorporate practical exercises: Include practical tasks or simulations in the interview to see skills in action. This could involve writing a sample email, analyzing data, coding, or presenting a solution to a problem.

Hire Top Talent With Skills-Based Assessments

Skill-based assessments offer great benefits like a better talent pool, improved diversity and inclusion, reduced time to hire, and so on. But to see these results, you need to do it right.

Our recommendation? Opt for an async skills-based assessment at the very beginning of your recruitment funnel—perhaps as a replacement for traditional resume reviews. With Willo, you can set up an async interview and send it to candidates in minutes. 

Sign up for a free trial and see the difference Willo can make. 

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