The Future of Tech Recruiting: The Evolution of Skills-Based Hiring

Skills-based hiring has markedly changed tech recruiting. Many companies and recruiters have deprioritized hiring based on degrees and other “check the box” qualifications, provided tech professionals can prove (usually via a technical interview) that they actually have the skills to accomplish the job. In fact, back in March, one in five U.S. job listings on LinkedIn didn’t require a four-year college degree.

Skills-based hiring will continue to transform how organizations and tech talent find and engage with each other. Here are our thoughts on the evolution of skills-based hiring, opportunities (and predictions), and how tech recruiters and employers should prepare in order to reap the benefits.

AI will transform how recruiters find the right tech professionals

Skills-based hiring today is centered on skills matching. As with every other facet of hiring, an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) matches keywords to a job description with keywords in a resume.

However, massive gaps in this process result in missed opportunities for both talent and hiring managers. A poor candidate resume means that your ATS won’t grab the right skills, potentially costing you a fantastic candidate. Or, your ATS’s job-matching capabilities might not be up to making the best possible matches. For instance, your recruiters could do manual searches and not type in the skills the way your ATS prefers them, leading to complications in sourcing the right candidates.

AI and automation have already made headway on solving this issue, with talent management platforms leveraging these technologies to frequently scan their candidate databases for a wider range of skills/terms, match them to their job openings, and then use automation to send out text or email messages inviting candidates to apply.

In the not-so-distant future, expect this technology to not only become more sophisticated but also be woven into your ATS framework rather than siloed within individual platforms. We predict that every employer will soon have the ability to constantly scan their databases and match tech professionals to job openings, drastically reducing cost per hire and time to hire for organizations across industries.

Candidates will have better opportunities to market their skills

The push toward skills-based recruiting has only strengthened the role of assessments in the hiring process. As a result, there are a host of assessment tools out there. Sometimes hiring managers even create their own assessments without a dedicated platform. There isn’t an industry standard around a vast majority of skills, and in most cases, candidates never see the results of their assessments. This can lead to dissatisfaction on the part of candidates, who don’t know how they can improve in subsequent interviews, and creates confusion for hiring managers who aren’t sure which tools actually yield the best results.

Looking ahead, rather than completing the same — or similar — assessments with multiple organizations as they look for new roles, technical talent will “own” their assessment data on emerging platforms that integrate with top ATSs. Candidate portfolios will include links to their formal assessments, just as they include links to their projects on GitHub.
Putting assessment data into the hands of candidates will create better candidate experiences by speeding up the hiring process and eliminating the repetitiveness of multiple assessments for each new job opportunity. It will also lessen the burden on recruiters, who will have instant access to assessment data (likely directly within their ATS) and may be able to eliminate poor-fit candidates earlier in the process.

Since skills data will be owned by candidates, they can essentially market themselves more effectively to recruiters with the extra benefit of fewer steps for recruiters to qualify candidates. The skills will already be qualified by a source trusted by both talent and recruiters, which benefits both parties. This is especially important as the flexible tech workforce continues to expand in 2024 and beyond.

What you can do right now

The best thing you can do right now is optimize your tech stack and your talent database to make the most of the tech at your disposal.

Clean up your candidate data

Specifically, consider leveraging automated outreach to clean your candidate data and improve data quality (especially around skills). There is a range of tools currently available from companies like Bullhorn and Sense that make candidate data cleanup exceedingly simple.

Ideally, recruiters could manually call, text, or email each candidate in their database to update their records. But with many databases well into the tens of thousands, manually updating data would take years (and you’d be in a never-ending cycle, since the data you started with would likely no longer be current).

Today’s talent engagement technology can automate this outreach and create better experiences for both recruiting teams and tech talent. Leveraging automation to improve outreach is especially urgent given, for instance, the concerning number of candidates who report not receiving communications from employers long after the application process.

Optimize your tech stack

Consider talent engagement platforms that consolidate point solutions and ensure integration among every (or nearly every) tool in your tech stack. This minimizes friction points or poor communication to ensure that the latest enhancements are being leveraged within your searches. Today’s technology can even automate skills matching between your job postings and the candidates in your database.

Even your assessment technology should integrate (or even simply communicate) effectively with your ATS and engagement partners. This resource from TestGorilla provides a nice overview of some of the assessment integrations available, for example. As we prepare for the end of 2023 and look ahead to 2024 and beyond, a consolidated talent tech stack is the most powerful way to prepare your organization for what’s to come.

By cleaning up your candidate data and optimizing your tech stack, your organization will stay on the cutting edge and be more than prepared for whatever the evolution of skills-based recruiting throws at you next.