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For years, college degrees served as a convenient filter for perceived potential, skill and persistence. Today, many employers are moving away from that model in favor of skills-based hiring.

But removing degree requirements doesn’t solve the harder problem: Most organizations still lack a reliable way to see, evaluate and compare skills at scale.

According to a National Association of Colleges and Employers survey, say they use skills-based hiring today. However, hiring outcomes haven’t changed at the same pace. Candidates are still being filtered out, hiring decisions remain inconsistent, and teams often fall back on proxies like experience, credentials or referrals.

The issue isn’t intent. It’s visibility. Without clear, standardized skill signals, skills-based hiring becomes difficult to execute and even harder to scale.

Removing college degrees as a requirement for certain roles has helped companies cast a wider net when hiring within a limited talent pool. Over the past decade, job postings that no longer require a college degree have increased, but those don’t always reflect hiring practices. , for every 100 job listings that no longer require a college degree, fewer than four candidates without a college degree were actually hired.

In such cases, skills-based hiring may fail due to faulty resumé screening, interview processes and hiring practices that overlook true competence.

Employers may talk about moving beyond the college degree, but the means to evaluate real skills aren’t necessarily there. Consider these findings from the Career Optimism Special Report™ Series: The Illusion of Progress in Skills-Based Hiring report conducted by ������ý in 2026:

• 48% of hiring leaders say they have removed or relaxed college degree requirements within the last three years.
• 82% of decision-makers in hiring say they’re adopting a more skills-based recruiting approach.
• 68% of the same companies have not implemented certifications, job-relevant evaluations, skill criteria and other alternative standards.

The gap between adopting a skills-based recruiting approach and the implementation of alternative evaluation criteria raises an important question. If hiring leaders aren’t relying on college degrees to evaluate job candidates, what are they relying on? Hiring without clear frameworks can lead to basing decisions on interviewer bias, referrals or untrustworthy AI tools. As a result, hiring managers may overlook solid applicants because there’s no clear definition of a qualified candidate. In practice, removing degree requirements without strengthening how skills are defined and evaluated can create more ambiguity, not less.

Despite growing interest in skills-based hiring, employers may struggle to align their recruitment practices with this goal. Both hiring managers and job seekers may find themselves flustered by the gap between evaluating talent and the reality of ineffective hiring processes.

Most employers (92%) surveyed in the Career Optimism Special Report feel confident about how they evaluate candidates’ skills. However, many acknowledge that their own hiring approaches don’t truly support skills-based evaluations. More than half of employers say their organizations lack a standardized hiring approach, and many job-related skills often get overlooked on resumés. This points to friction on both the recruiter and candidate sides.

As a result, candidates are left frustrated and confused, with 65% expressing dissatisfaction with job searching. Additionally, roughly 58% of job seekers report being rejected for jobs they fully qualify for, which 22% of hiring managers blame on faulty application and candidate filtering systems.

While hiring managers may acknowledge there is a disconnect that is causing them to overlook well-qualified candidates, about 69% of them say the hiring process places too much emphasis on college degrees and not enough on skills.

Additionally, personal connections can decide who gets hired. Hiring managers may leverage referrals and personal relationships when determining which candidates are the most fit for a job.

Consider the following data points from the 2026 Career Optimism Special Report:

• 30% of applicant pipelines and 32% of new hires have a referral connection.
• 81% of job seekers say knowing someone is still more important than qualifying for a role.
• Although about 44% of hiring managers don’t believe referrals are important for hiring, 79% say referrals influence their final hiring decisions.

This hurdle is linked to a lack of effective skill assessment strategies, not necessarily mal-intent. But when hiring managers rely on personal referrals, qualified candidates can be overlooked, which in turn can negatively affect productivity. When skill signals are inconsistent or hard to interpret, hiring decisions default to what feels most reliable, not what’s most accurate.

To create solid hiring practices, decision-makers should receive adequate training in job description creation, candidate assessment, data input in tracking systems and employee onboarding. They should also understand the value of skills-based hiring while using change management to support skills-focused initiatives.

That may sound obvious, but consider this: Despite interview policy being set by human resources, many hiring choices are not made by HR. About 20% of hiring managers and 24% of non-HR decision-makers interview candidates without receiving adequate training. When hiring managers lack adequate training and preparedness, companies experience barriers to fair, skills-focused hiring.

Additionally, without proper guidance, evaluation and structured rubrics, hiring managers may default to subjective measures that can lead to unconscious bias — meaning they decide if someone is a good fit based on first impressions instead of job-related criteria. The result of such bias can be detrimental to a company’s commitment to workplace equality and, in some cases, may violate law.

To conduct fair assessments of candidates’ skills and potential, hiring managers need to be trained and equipped to do so. About 57% of hiring managers say they wish they had this type of training. Without shared criteria and trained evaluators, “qualified” becomes subjective — varying by interviewer, team and role. 

AI was brought into the hiring process with the expectation of improved objectivity and speed. It has the capability to scan resumés, scour social media accounts and gather data to create a picture of a candidate’s competency and character.

Estimates from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission show that in 2023, and nearly all Fortune 500 companies relied on automation to help sort or rank job applicants during the hiring process. Indeed, HR professionals can often see the value of data-based assistance with hiring, although half of hiring managers recognize that AI is screening out qualified candidates.

Just as hiring managers can have bias when it comes to hiring, so, too, can AI. But knowing this doesn’t always translate to checking AI-powered tools for fairness. According to the Career Optimism Special Report™ Series: The Illusion of Progress in Skills-Based Hiring report, just 37% of companies utilizing AI say they check the tools for fairness.

If hiring mangers see the merits of AI in recruitment and retention, applicants take a slightly dimmer view. The Career Optimism Special Report reveals that those who believe AI was involved in reviewing their applications are much more likely to express dissatisfaction with their job-seeking experience. They’re even more likely to believe that this technology reduced their chances of employers seeing them. Even applicants who regularly use AI tools express a lack of trust in the technology, with 66% convinced that it adds bias to hiring decisions.

The problem isn’t whether candidates understand those systems. It’s how companies use them and how clearly they disclose that. The risks are growing, according to the Career Optimism Special Report, as 30% of hiring decision-makers say AI is beginning to take over tasks people once did. AI can accelerate hiring decisions, but without strong underlying skill signals, it can also reinforce the same gaps at scale.

If your hiring process says it’s skills-based, but outcomes tell a different story, the issue may not be intent — it may be visibility. Many organizations are discovering that without clear, standardized ways to define and evaluate skills, hiring decisions become inconsistent, harder to scale and more reliant on proxies.

See what’s actually breaking down in skills-based hiring, and what it takes to fix it.