Skills vs. experience: What matters more for hiring?

A recent study by Korn Ferry estimates that by 2030, more than 85 million jobs will sit empty due to a lack of talent. [1] With fewer qualified workers, businesses must ensure their recruitment strategies are effective so they can fill their open positions with the right people.

However, so many companies are still using outdated candidate screening methods – like resumes. For instance, we surveyed 1,500 employers in 2023 and found that 82% still use resume screening. Meanwhile, 69% think that resumes can tell them all they need to know about a candidates’ competencies. Our guess? Employers continue to rely on resumes because they mistakenly believe experience is the key to finding the right talent. 

We’re here to tell you that experience matters less than skills – and prioritizing experience can lead to missed opportunities, mis-hires, and more. Below, we help you see why focusing on skills vs. experience can help you find the right people for your roles and weather talent shortages.

Skills vs. experience: 6 reasons why skills matter more

Here at TestGorilla, we strongly believe that organizations should consider candidates’ skills before considering their prior work experience and education. 

Here’s why. 

1. Work experience doesn’t help you understand a candidate’s abilities

Traditional hiring practices rely on experience and educational background to identify promising candidates. This doesn’t work. 

The problem is that employers use experience to measure a candidate’s abilities – but it’s an unreliable measure. As Legal Writer Kate Stacey shared with us, “While experience can be eye-catching, it’s not always the most reliable indicator of performance. Skills, on the other hand, reflect whether candidates possess the tangible abilities to excel in a given role.”

Florida State University Professor Chad H. Van Iddekinge found through a review of 81 studies that there was no significant correlation between an employee’s prior work experience and their performance in a new organization. 

Some employers are realizing this. We spoke to Kolyanne P. SK, founder of Pinch of Attitude, about skills vs. experience. She said, “For us, what makes a good candidate is how well they can showcase the skills they have studied and learned over the years” – not how many years of experience they have. 

2. Candidates without the “necessary” experience might still be great for the job

When you require specific work experience or degrees, you unfairly exclude some candidates who are otherwise qualified – including those skilled through alternative routes (STARs). 

For example, a candidate without five years of coding experience might have the knowledge and skills necessary to take on a software development role. They might have developed these through self-study or coding bootcamps. Similarly, a graphic designer might be lacking formal design experience but still have the necessary know-how from working on a passion project.

Also, consider a role focusing on machine learning with neural networks – an emerging field within artificial intelligence (AI) that's rapidly advancing. Expecting candidates to have several years of experience in neural networks may be impractical, excluding qualified candidates who didn’t join the field right away. At worst, these requirements can be completely unrealistic. 

3. Experience and degrees don’t help you understand candidates’ soft skills

Our 2023 State of Skills-Based Hiring research found that 91% of employers believe soft skills are more important now than five years ago. This shows that employers are increasingly recognizing the growing importance of attributes like communication, adaptability, and problem-solving to business success.

While a candidate’s experience might be able to give you some insight into their soft skills, it won’t give you the full picture. Consider a candidate with five years of experience in management, for instance. You might expect them to possess various soft skills related to management. However, you could discover after hiring them that their interpersonal skills are lacking or they struggle with adaptability in rapidly changing environments. 

4. Experience-first hiring breeds experience-based bias

When we spoke to HR expert Yashna Wahal, she said, “Traditional hiring methods inadvertently perpetuate biases. You end up favoring candidates from specific backgrounds or with certain types of experience.”

The phenomenon she’s describing? Experience-based bias. 

Picture this: a recruiter is considering two candidates for a marketing position. One has experience at a big-name agency, while the other has experience at a small agency the recruiter has never heard of. Odds are, the recruiter is going to favor the candidate from the big-name agency. 

The problem? The candidate from the smaller agency might be a better fit for the position. But the recruiter might hire the other candidate because of their experience. 

5. Experience isn’t as important as it used to be

Experience was much more important when most people followed linear career paths. These traditional paths often emphasized a steady accumulation of skills and knowledge in a specific field, and experience was a more reliable indicator of their competencies.

But nonlinear careers are the norm in today’s job market. Factors like technological advancements, shifting economic conditions, and evolving personal and professional priorities drive frequent job changes. According to PEW Research, from January to March 2022, an average of 4 million people in the US changed jobs each month.

Some job swappers might have the skills you need but lack years of experience in a specific role.

6. Experience-based hires don’t work out as well as skills-based hires

When we surveyed 1,500 employees, 38% of those considered skills-based hires were happy at their jobs. Meanwhile, only 28% of the experience-based hires felt content in their roles. We think this is partially because skills-based hires are often better fits for their roles: they have the skills necessary to thrive. 

Experienced-based hires lacking the skills you need become mis-hires. 

Mis-hires are common. Research from Robert Half, which included responses from more than 2,800 senior managers, found that 76% of senior managers believed they had recruited the wrong candidates for past roles. The research attributed this to “hiring mistakes.”

In our survey, 88% of employers who prioritized skills over experience in recruitment reduced their mis-hires. 

Why you should choose skills-first hiring

Experience is important, but it shouldn’t take priority over skills. Here’s why skills should come first.

Skills-first hiring finds the best qualified candidates

According to McKinsey, hiring for skills is over twice as effective in predicting job performance compared to hiring based on work experience.

In our own research, 98% of survey respondents told us they think skills-based hiring is more effective at identifying talent than resumes. That effectiveness can be even greater when you adopt skills-based hiring practices early in the hiring process and fully replace reliance on resumes. 

Many employers make the mistake of using skills-based hiring only when reviewing shortlisted candidates. To reach that short list, candidates are first reviewed using traditional resume screening. As a result, qualified candidates have already been cut from consideration before skills-based hiring has a chance to make a difference. 

To get an edge in hiring the best candidates, it’s time to lean into skills-first hiring. This means evaluating candidates on their skills right away instead of using resume screening.

Skills-first hiring grows and diversifies the talent pool

As talent shortages grow, broadening your talent pool makes sense. Removing unreliable talent markers enables more candidates to be considered. This benefits candidates by opening up more career opportunities, while organizations get better chances to find candidates whose skills match job requirements. 

This also opens the door for increased workplace diversity and its benefits. Eighty-four percent of the employers in our research who adopted skills-based hiring saw a positive impact on workplace diversity. 

Prepare for skills-first hiring

While shifting to skills-first hiring seems difficult, the actual steps to get there are simple. Let’s look at the necessary changes to make – starting before you publish that job posting.

Job description changes that support skills-first hiring

Start by reviewing job descriptions with a critical eye. Ask yourself these questions:

Have you reviewed the skills needed for the position? 

Don’t just rely on old job descriptions to determine the skills you need for a position. They may be outdated and contain only hard skills. Determine hard skills that reflect the job’s current needs, and identify the soft skills critical to the role – like virtual communication or conflict management. 

If you’re having trouble determining the essential skills, consider seeking help from current employees in similar roles, the employees the new hire will work with, or industry experts. You can also peek at modern job descriptions for similar roles. 

Are educational requirements necessary to the position? 

A college degree has long been a barrier for candidates, even when it isn’t required. If a degree is a necessity, such as for doctors or lawyers, then including it makes sense. However, many times, a degree has no direct tie to the job’s requirements. 

That’s why the trend to include degree requirements in job descriptions is reversing. According to Indeed, 52% of US job postings no longer require formal education.

Are years of experience meaningful? 

Remove minimum experience requirements so you don’t miss out on quality candidates. Instead, emphasize the knowledge and skills candidates need. 

If you believe experience is essential to the position, clearly define which aspects of that experience are critical and why. For example, for a senior position, emphasize the need for proven leadership skills or deep knowledge of strategic project management.

Is industry experience necessary? 

If your business is in a heavily regulated industry, there may be some value in hiring someone who knows that industry well. For instance, in financial services, familiarity with specific compliance laws and regulations can be important. 

In many cases, though, industry experience provides significantly less value than the core competencies needed for a role. For example, for a project management position, strong organizational and leadership skills might outweigh specific knowledge of the industry. In these situations, consider omitting the need for industry experience and instead highlighting the competencies you need. 

Skills-first sourcing strategies

Talent acquisition specialists must also reconsider how they source candidates. Many common sourcing strategies rely on ineffective data. 

For example, one strategy is to search for candidates on professional networking sites only using job titles. Doing this ignores how varied job titles have become – rigid titles are less common, and companies and individuals often jazz up their job titles. For example, one company might call a senior office manager an “office architect.”

Searching by job title identifies only a small percentage of potential candidates.

To improve sourcing outcomes, make these strategic improvements:

• Use skill-based keywords in your searches. Search for specific skills that are crucial for the role (the skills you listed in your job description). Many professional networking sites enable users to list skills on their profiles.

• Search for related skills. Look for candidates with transferable skills – abilities that apply to various roles at your organization, such as leadership or critical thinking. Also, seek out candidates with complementary skills – skills that aren’t essential to the role but could enhance it. Candidates who possess related skills but not the role’s main skills might be able to easily learn them.   

• Leverage AI in sourcing. For example, generative AI tools can help you find similar skills and search terms to improve your sourcing results. You might ask ChatGPT for skills that complement negotiation, for instance.

• Search each candidate’s full profile. Look beyond their job titles and experience and try to gain some insights into their competencies. 

Candidate assessment best practices

Falling back on traditional hiring methods becomes extremely tempting when you’re ready to assess candidates. After all, you now have a list of people who might be interested in working for you. But, you need a way to narrow that list. 

So, what can you do to narrow the list without losing talent unnecessarily? Skills-first hiring practices will see you through this stage, too.

Replace experience-based screening with skill assessments

Traditional candidate screening would narrow your talent pool by eliminating candidates who don’t match years of experience – depriving your company of strong candidates.

To avoid this, ditch applications and resume screening – and use talent assessments instead. Talent assessments are tools for objectively evaluating candidates’ skills, behaviors, and culture add.

Let’s consider an example. Assume you’re hiring a social media marketing manager. By asking all applicants to take talent assessments rather than filling out applications or sharing their resumes, you can learn right away which candidates have the marketing skills you need. 

Bring a skills-first approach into candidate interviews

Once you’ve narrowed down your applicant pool using talent assessments, you can interview the strongest ones. This is the stage where you can start to probe your candidates’ experience. 

Unfortunately, it’s normal for candidates to attempt to give the “right” answer to interview questions rather than having an honest discussion of their abilities. This makes judging a candidate’s actual abilities based on their answers difficult.  

Instead of asking generic interview questions, such as, “Do you have experience doing X?”, focus on behavioral and situational questions. These questions draw out details on how your candidate approaches work and challenges. 

Behavioral questions are open-ended prompts that ask how your candidate has approached challenges like conflict resolution and adapting to change. For example, you might ask them to describe a time when they disagreed with a manager and had to express their opinion. 

While these questions do discuss experience, you don’t have to limit them to experiences directly tied to the role they are interviewing for. Instead, give candidates more room to discuss transferable skills and highlight moments that show they’re ready for the challenges the new role would present.  

In addition, you can ask situational questions – which delve into how employees might handle hypothetical scenarios in the future. For example, you might ask them how they’d approach a task assignment when they’ve never done that task before.

Situational questions help determine whether a candidate can cope with uncertainty, push through adversity, and solve problems creatively. 

Focus on what you actually need from a candidate

Skills required for a role come on a spectrum from competence through mastery. For example, a competent software developer may be proficient in the needed coding language and have a general understanding of the software architecture. By comparison, a master software developer would have a deep understanding of the coding language and be able to develop complex and scalable systems.

Not all jobs require mastery right away. 

Determine where competence will allow a new hire to be productive now, and invest in learning and development to move them toward mastery over time. 

When faced with a talent shortage, you must find candidates who show development potential vs. experience. As HR expert Medi Jones shared with us, “Experience is simply a matter of time. Hire for a candidate’s potential, and you’ll invest in your future.” 

Don’t overlook internal talent

Your skills-first hiring processes are also an integral part of identifying skills gaps in your organization and promoting internal mobility. With over 40% of workers leaving their jobs due to a lack of career growth opportunities according to a recent McKinsey study, you can’t afford to ignore the talent you already have. 

Talent assessments work hand in hand with internal recruitment efforts. Evaluating your current employees helps you identify workers with the skills you need for your open roles – even if they don’t have the desired experience. 

Adopt a skills-first approach to future-proof your organization 

Traditional talent acquisition practices that focus on experience and educational background to assess talent are failing.

Continuing to rely on them will lead to mis-hires that negatively impact your business. This is something you can’t afford with the growing talent shortages.

A shift in mindset toward skills-first hiring is necessary to align hiring practices with the realities of the job market. To begin, consider using TestGorilla. Our talent assessment platform offers hundreds of tests you can use to evaluate candidates. This way, you can put skills first – and find the talent you need. 

Employers that make the shift to skills-first hiring now will be best prepared to weather the growing talent shortages. Will your organization be ready?

Sources

1. “The $8.5 Trillion Talent Shortage.” https://www.kornferry.com/insights/this-week-in-leadership/talent-crunch-future-of-work