Skills Based Hiring: Your ultimate checklist

When O'Reilly is talking, the IT world is listening – On the topic of skills-based hiring, Jeanne Cordisco, Chief People Officer at O'Reilly, says: ‘In the face of rapid technological advances that are leading to radical changes in employment opportunities, companies are increasingly looking for people with specialised skills.’

The tech and IT world was of course a pioneer in this regard due to the rapid pace of technological change. Current figures confirm that selecting employees based on their skills is becoming increasingly common practice – even beyond the tech industry. That is why we are once again addressing this topic after our previous article ‘Skills-Based Hiring: How to Write Competency-based Job Ads’. This time, we are offering you a practical checklist that builds directly on our introductory article on skills-based hiring. For more in-depth insights and further examples, we recommend reading this as well.

The advantages of skills-based hiring

Let's recap the advantages of skills-based recruiting. It is important to us that companies understand how essential this type of recruiting has become – especially in tech recruiting.

Increased employee retention 

Statistics show that employees hired through skills-based hiring are more likely to stay with the company in the long term. This leads to an average tenure of 4.7 years compared to 4.3 years for traditionally hired employees, presumably because they are fully engaged in their roles and able to reach their full potential.

Improving diversity, equality and inclusion

Removing unnecessary barriers opens up access to a broader and more diverse talent pool. According to LinkedIn, skills-based recruiting can increase the number of Generation Z and Millennials in the candidate pool by a factor of ten and nine respectively, and thus opens doors for traditionally underrepresented groups.

Higher quality new hires 

A reduced focus on academic qualifications and more interest in skills means that successful candidates are already equipped with the necessary knowledge. This leads to faster productivity in the new role and a 2.5 times higher probability that they will become high performers.

Improved candidate experience

Skills-based hiring practices often replace redundant application steps and interview rounds with more interactive experiences. Four out of five candidates who take skills tests rate their experience positively.

Reducing hiring mistakes

Wrong hires are a significant cost factor. Skills-based hiring introduces objective data into the hiring process. This makes it possible to compare candidates based on specific skills and eliminate doubts as well as conscious and unconscious biases.

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Now let's move on to the practical part – how skills-based job ads are structured.

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The skills-based section of job ads

The primary differences between a skills-based job ad and one that is not are the job role and the skills and qualifications (see Fig. 1, marked in green). To put these sections together, the following steps are required:

Job role

Conduct an activity analysis:

• ✅ Action: Conduct detailed research into the specific activities of the role.
• ➡️ Example: Interviews with current job holders and their superiors to gain insights into the daily workflow.

Clearly define tasks:

• ✅ Action: Create a precise to-do list for the position.
• ➡️ Example: List of daily routines and special project tasks that the candidate will be responsible for.

Establish a relationship with the skills:

• ✅ Action: Match each task to the necessary skills.
• ➡️ Example: Assigning programming skills to technical tasks and the ability to work in a team to cooperative projects.

Prioritisation and weighting:

• ✅ Action: Evaluate the importance of each task in the context of the job requirements.
• ➡️ Example: Determine which tasks occur daily and which occur only monthly, and prioritise accordingly.

Documentation and review:

• ✅ Action: Review and finalise the job description.
• ➡️ Example: Review of the final job description by the HR department and relevant team members or management.

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Skills and qualifications

Consider each role as a collection of skills. This has the advantage that talents can be used more flexibly. It also promotes internal mobility and makes teams more resilient – because they can react flexibly to absences and transfer employees to different positions..

Identify and document skills:

• ✅ Action: List all the necessary skills for the areas of responsibility.
• ➡️ Example: Detailed list of specialised knowledge such as software tools or management skills.

Must-have vs. Nice-to-have + Soft Skills:

• ✅ Action: Separate essential from desirable skills. And don't forget soft skills.
• ➡️ Example: Create a skills matrix (see below) for easier understanding

Example of a simplified skills matrix for a DevOps engineer:

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Prioritising relevance and necessity:

• ✅ Action: Create a priority list based on the importance of each skill for the job.
• ➡️ Example: Weighting core competencies against each other draws a clear picture of what is most important in a position.

Validation and customisation:

• ✅ Action: Regularly adjust the requirements to reflect current market and business needs.
• ➡️ Example: Review the skills list at least annually to ensure it is still relevant and up to date.

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Elements of a successful job ad

Now we'll break down the remaining sections. You can find practical examples in our previous Insight. 

General: language and tone in the job ad

What makes for good language?

• Clarity: Avoid unnecessarily complicated terms and jargon.
• Authenticity: The ad should match the company – is the culture rather relaxed or traditional?
• Use direct and active language: ‘You will develop innovative marketing strategies independently and implement them together with your team.’
• Use storytelling: Describe what a typical day in the role looks like.
• Show authenticity: Show that this is a real team of real people.

Job title

Best practices for job titles:

• Be precise and transparent: Instead of ‘marketing rock star’, use ‘performance marketing manager’.
• Use common terms: Job titles should be established in the industry and easy to find on platforms like LinkedIn.
• Indicate seniority and specialisation: ‘Senior Data Analyst’ instead of just ‘Data Analyst’ or ‘Cloud Security Engineer’ instead of ‘IT Security Expert’.
• Avoid jargon: ‘Product Ninja’ or ‘Coding Wizard’ are creative titles, but often misleading for applicants.

Introduction

Important elements of the introduction:

• A clear message: Why is this role attractive? What makes it different from others?
• An authentic insight into the company culture: What are the company's values?
• Personal address: directly engage the reader to spark curiosity.

Company culture and values

Best practices:

• Present company values and mission: what makes working there special?
• Describe the work environment: does the company offer remote work, flexible hours or training budgets? Also provide a realistic insight into the workday.
• Provide team insights: If possible, include a short statement from a team member or describe how the team works together.

Diversity statement

Best practices:

• Inclusive language: Choose wording that appeals to all applicants (‘reinforcement for our team’ instead of ‘young, dynamic employees’).
• Part of the corporate culture: The diversity statement does not have to be listed separately, but is ideally already woven into the corporate culture and the previous section.

Benefits, incentives and salary

• Overview of additional benefits: flexible working hours, training opportunities, health programmes (in that order) and everything else
• Salary transparency: state the salary – at least in the form of a salary range. 

Job description and responsibilities

What makes a good job description?

• Concreteness: Instead of ‘You will work in marketing’, it's better to say ‘You will develop and optimise Google Ads campaigns to generate leads’.
• Focus on impact and results: Not only name activities, but also highlight the added value (‘You will help to increase our reach on social media by 30%’).
• Realistic requirements: Areas of responsibility that are too ambitious or too broad can be off-putting.
• Job storytelling: Companies formulate their job ads in such a way that applicants recognise their own suitability. Instead of: ‘Master's degree in communication sciences and five years of experience required.’  Better: ‘Do you love developing creative campaigns that inspire your audience? Have you built successful social media strategies and used storytelling to win over customers?’ 

Formulating skills and qualifications correctly

Best practices:

• Prioritise essential requirements: What is really necessary to fill the role? List a maximum of 8-10 must-have skills.
• Take willingness to learn into account: Instead of ‘5 years of experience in Python required’, write ‘Experience in Python or comparable programming languages, willingness to undertake advanced training desired’.
• Don't overemphasise soft skills: ‘Ability to work in a team’ or ‘Hands-on mentality’ say little – it's better to formulate specific expectations (‘You will coordinate projects with various departments independently’).

Call to action

• Make it easy to apply: Encourage applicants with a simple and straightforward application process (and of course provide one).
• Communicate clearly what the application process involves: Will there be a telephone interview? How will the assessment take place?
• Provide a timeframe: ‘We will contact you within five working days of receiving your application.’

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Conclusion: The future of recruiting was yesterday

Skills-Based Hiring is the new de facto standard for technical positions – say goodbye to traditional titles and academic degrees and  look beyond them. Technology is moving faster than the ability of traditional educational institutions to prepare people for it. Our checklist provides a structured method for aligning your recruiting process with this more effective way of acquiring talent. 

Encourage your team to adopt the principles and steps in our checklist and experience the difference Skills-Based makes. Remain open to making adjustments and improvements to the process based on the specific needs of your organisation and the feedback from your workforce.

If you want to bring change to your company, start with our Skills Based Hiring Checklist.

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