Critics have declared skills-based hiring dead on arrival—overhyped, underdelivering, and destined for the corporate graveyard alongside other HR fads. They point to studies showing employers quietly reinstating degree requirements and job postings that still favor degree holders as proof of failure.
But the obituaries are premature, because critics are missing a key part of the argument: skills-based hiring isn’t failing because it doesn’t work. It’s “failing” because most companies never actually tried it.
The Straw Man Critique
Let’s be clear about what critics are measuring.
When companies remove degree requirements but keep everything else the same—biased résumé screens, unstructured interviews, hiring managers who equate credentials with competence—of course nothing can change. That’s not skills-based hiring. That’s cosmetic reform designed to check a box while preserving the status quo.
Real skills-based hiring means fundamentally restructuring how you evaluate talent: competency-based scorecards, practical assessments, structured interviews, and validation systems that track whether the skills you hired for actually predict performance.
Critics who declare the approach dead after a few years of limited implementation fundamentally misunderstand what it takes to actually evolve hiring practices.
When companies have spent decades defaulting to degrees as a lazy proxy for ability, institutional transformation doesn’t happen overnight. Premature obituaries of skills-based hiring don’t prove failure—they prove impatience.
The Business Case Is Undeniable
When organizations actually implement skills-based practices, they see results that should make any business leader pay attention.
- According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), skills-first hiring reduces cost-per-hire by 30%.
- STARs—the 70M workers skilled through alternative routes, rather than bachelor’s degrees—tend to stay in their jobs 34% longer than workers with degrees.
- Hiring based on skills is five times more predictive of job performance than education, and 2.5 times more predictive than work experience.
- Employers report that employees without degrees are equally as productive or, in some cases, more productive than college graduates.
For an economy wrestling with retention crises and talent shortages, these are not just nice-to-have metrics. They’re a clear competitive advantage. And employers in the public and private sectors are taking notice.
- In Colorado, which opened 93% of state roles to STARs, more than 1,500 STARs were hired in 2024—climbing from 36% in January to 54% in December.
- Philadelphia launched the City College of Municipal Employment to build direct pathways into city careers, combining technical training with foundational skills and paid work experience across six priority areas—leading to a 20% wage increase for promoted CCME graduates.
- QTS, a data center company owned by Blackstone, created an internal Data Center Academy to address the massive labor shortage in AI infrastructure. Their talent programs have led to 100 new, trained hires—8% of the company’s total workforce.
- Accenture has made apprenticeships 20% of their entry-level hires, with over 2,500 apprentices since 2016. As CEO Julie Sweet notes: “Apprenticeship required us to rethink our talent strategy—it has to be embedded in what you do.”
These aren’t outliers or statistical noise. They’re proof points that skills matter more than credentials when you actually measure them.
What Critics Get Wrong
The most revealing criticism isn’t that skills-based hiring doesn’t work—it’s that it requires investment. Critics frame the expense of skills assessments as disqualifying while ignoring the massive hidden costs of the status quo.
Companies succeeding with skills-based hiring share common elements.
They treat it as a comprehensive talent strategy, not a single policy tweak. They invest in assessment tools, train hiring managers, and build systems that can fairly evaluate diverse backgrounds and experiences.
Yes, this requires more effort than scanning for degree requirements. But so does any system upgrade that delivers better results. The question isn’t whether it costs money—it’s whether it delivers superior outcomes.
For organizations that implement skills-based hiring properly, the answer is unequivocally yes.
The Urgency Moment
STARs represent over half the U.S. workforce. They are disproportionately Black, Hispanic, rural, and first-generation professionals, and are just as likely to succeed in middle- and high-wage roles as degree holders when given the chance. Yet they’re systematically screened out by hiring processes built for pedigree rather than performance.
The irony is stunning. At the exact moment when demographic shifts, AI disruption, and talent shortages demand that we expand our aperture for talent, critics want to shrink it back to these failed credential filters.
Hiring doesn’t have to be a binary choice between “degree” or “no degree.” All workers bring certifications, apprenticeships, military training, portfolios, and experience to the job market. Skills-based hiring creates systems that weigh these fairly alongside degrees, rather than defaulting to a single proxy that screens out half the talent pool.
And this approach will only become more essential as generative AI makes résumés and traditional applications easier to game. Skills-based assessments, structured interviews, and validated scorecards aren’t just better hiring tools—they’re the only real defenses against this new reality.
The companies and governments succeeding with this approach understand a fundamental truth: if you care about equity, competitiveness, and building organizations that can thrive in an age of AI and demographic change, then skills-based hiring isn’t optional. It’s essential.
A More Honest Meritocracy
Skills-based hiring isn’t failing—it’s barely been tried. What’s failing is the old system that rewarded pedigree over potential, networks over know-how, and privilege over performance.
The question isn’t whether skills-based hiring works. The data is clear: when implemented properly, it delivers better business outcomes and opens pathways to economic mobility for millions of qualified workers. The question is whether we have the courage to implement it right.
For the 70M STARs locked out of opportunities they’re qualified for, for companies struggling to fill critical roles while overlooking proven talent, and for an economy that needs all available skills, the answer should be obvious.
The only real failure would be giving up before we’ve actually started.
Mike Bradshaw is a member of Opportunity@Work’s STARs Advisory Council and is vice president of talent for Pinpoint Applicant Tracking System.