Employers know the old ways of hiring don’t work today. The talent landscape changes too fast and is too nuanced to rely on college degrees and years of experience. If you’ve felt the sting of hiring the wrong person, you especially know. 

It’s why more businesses, governments, and hiring managers are embracing skills-based hiring by assessing people based on their talent as well as things like aptitudes and personal strengths that can be more useful predictors of success.  The reason is skills-based hiring alone is a good step in the right direction, but it’s not enough because a person can be skilled enough to do a job, but they need to be motivated to contribute to really drive value long-term. That’s where assessing strengths comes in (more on that later).  

Employers find using this method helps them make better hires because it considers a candidate as a whole, not just as a degree. This leads to a more productive and motivated workforce because when workers are a good match and understand how their skillset helps create value towards a company’s mission, they’re self-propelled to contribute. This leads to lower turnover, better performance, and a slew of other benefits for employers and jobseekers, many of whom have been shut out of jobs they’re qualified for simply because they lacked a degree. 

Below, we’ll explain what skills-based hiring is, how to do it, and why it needs to be combined with aptitudes for employers and candidates to succeed. 

What is skills-based hiring? 

Skills-based hiring is a method of talent acquisition and development that prioritizes skills over traditional qualifications such as college degrees, titles, or years of experience. The goal is to help businesses and employers find employees who are better fits, while giving overlooked talent opportunities to apply their valued skills and reach their full potential.  

Applying skills-based hiring takes many forms, according to Jobs for the Future, such as:  

• Rewriting job descriptions to focus on skills and dropping college degree requirements.  
• Considering internal talent for new or different roles. 
• Equipping employees with career path guidance. 
• Connecting employers with the talent coming out of community colleges or training centers. 

Skills-based hiring is a better way of sourcing talent and creates opportunity for jobseekers, but just because a person can perform a job, doesn’t mean it’s their personal strength that will spark them to contribute. That’s why we need aptitudes-based hiring.   

What is aptitudes-based hiring? 

Aptitudes-based hiring acknowledges that everyone has unique strengths, experiences, and talents that could be assets to an organization. This solution views everyone – from CEOs, to frontline workers to prospective hires – as individuals who can meaningfully contribute when they are empowered to leverage their unique aptitudes and skills.  

It’s a mindset shift away from defining people based on arbitrary factors unrelated to their ability to do a job. This is the status quo that is failing to properly connect workers with careers even as employers are eager for new talent and workers struggle to find purposeful work.  

Employers integrate aptitudes into hiring by considering the unique strengths of job candidates and then placing them into roles where they can apply them to their fullest extent. Businesses that do this benefit by giving employees agency to apply their skills in a way that betters the organization, which further drives contribution.  

Focusing on aptitudes encourages workers to adopt a growth mindset so that they’re developing personally and professionally all the while finding new ways to contribute.  

Skills-based vs. degree-based hiring: Why aptitudes matter 

Skills-based hiring doesn’t mean we should ignore college degrees or other qualifications during the hiring process. Many careers and lines of work require, for good reasons, certain levels of education.  

But many hirers heavily rely on degrees in hiring decisions. More than 70% of new jobs require a bachelor’s degree, but fewer than 50% of workers have one, according to Opportunity@Work. 

What makes hiring based on skills and aptitudes different is that it doesn’t over-rely on those factors. 1. Because traditional measures like degrees and years of experience are not reliable indicators of success and; 2. because they can exclude qualified candidates, robbing a jobseeker of an opportunity they’d excel in, and denying an employer a contribution-minded employee.  

Accounting for aptitudes and skills allows you to better assess the person you’re recruiting. 

Seeing there’s opportunity to attract more quality candidates, the federal government, state governments, and major corporations like Delta Airlines, Dell, and Bank of America have eliminated degree requirements for large portions of their workforce. 

Skills-based hiring statistics 

 Here’s what the numbers say about skills-based hiring:  

• Skills-based talent practices save businesses 70-92% per employee when used to build emerging skills rather than hiring new talent, according to Jobs for the Future. 
• 70 million workers are skilled through alternative routes, according to Opportunity@ Work, meaning they don’t hold a bachelor’s degree, but are active in the workforce, have a high school diploma, and are 25 or older. 
• Skills-based hiring can promote higher levels of workforce diversity: Degree requirements exclude 76% of Black candidates and 83% of Hispanic jobseekers. 
• 87% of surveyed business executives told the Society of Human Resources Management that workers who hold alternative credentials bring value to the workplace. 

Skills-based hiring is on the rise 

Skills-based practices are on the rise due to the benefit for both employers and job seekers. But combining it with aptitudes and strengths assures business and employees will drive value.   

With a vast, new group of workers chosen to tap into their unique aptitudes and talents, employers can rest assured that economic goals are met while opening up their organization to more contribution-minded employees. 

Not only that, but employee fulfillment is improved. Employees who see how their skills fit into the company’s whole are motivated to pursue fulfilling, meaningful life paths, boosting their career trajectories, and helping them meet their full potential. 

The Stand Together community partners with changemakers who are tackling the root causes of America’s biggest problems. 

Download Jobs for the Future’s report on how to implement skills-based practices, and learn more about Stand Together’s efforts to transform the future of work.