My first experience with skills-based hiring definitely set the wrong tone for the tech. An old friend just started working at a new HR technology company. They specialized in skills-based hiring. Soon after starting there, she contacted me about working together. We booked a meeting.

On that call, she told me they were looking for a writer to help with skill definitions. I didn’t really get what they were looking for, but I booked a follow-up call with the CEO anyway. I figured they would help me clarify what this project was based on.

The CEO did clarify, just not anything good. See, their team was looking for someone to write a definition for each skill that would be used to do skills-based hiring. My brain would be the thing that would define how people matched (or didn’t) for jobs through this software. The money was great, but after a few days passed I knew it just didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel right to me that people would be assessed according to one person’s definition of a skill.

What Is Skills-Based Hiring?

There’s no universal language to talk about work. That’s the problem with a lot of skills-based hiring from my POV. Who defines the skill in the first place? That’s just the beginning of the bias that’s possible in this matchmaking.

High-level, they’ve got the right idea. Skills-based hiring means that companies want people to focus more on behavioral skills like their ability to learn new skills, solve problems, and communicate their findings. I just don’t understand how they plan to do that.

Auditing your current roles for skills to create a taxonomy is a giant project in itself. Then, how long is that information even good for? 85% of jobs that will exist in 2030 haven’t even been invented yet.

Writing A Skills-Based Job Description

If that’s true, it’s probably a good idea to understand what skills exist inside your business now before this “reskilling revolution” comes (their words, not mine). My first step if I were you? Work with managers to redo their job descriptions to identify the skills each role has.

Look, you can buy some software and take a quiz but that’s going to get you more generic shit. This task doesn’t mean writing all the definitions of the skills. It’s the exercise of talking people through their current job description by asking questions like, “What do you do every day?” or “What does a more senior person do that you do not do?” Then, you’ll work with them to translate this information into “you” phrases for the skills-based job description. For example, it’s phrases like:

• You know how to…
• You feel comfortable…
• You are confident in scenarios where…

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