Late January through February is one of the busiest times of the year for recruitment activity in New Zealand. Employers across the country are facing a familiar challenge: how to find the right people for their teams (and probably competing with other employers to make a good impression on candidates). You’ve probably heard the buzz around “skills-based hiring” and wondered whether it’s just another HR trend or something that could genuinely transform your recruitment process. We believe that when done well, skills-based hiring can be a powerful approach to building stronger, more diverse teams. But it requires a shift in how we think about recruitment from the very beginning.
The foundation: start with a strong position description
Before we dive into skills-based hiring, let’s talk about where all good recruitment begins: the position description. Whether you’re embracing skills-based hiring or taking a more traditional approach, a well-crafted position description is your roadmap for everything that follows … well beyond the hiring process.
A great position description does more than list tasks and responsibilities. It helps you clarify what success looks like in the role, what skills and capabilities are genuinely necessary, and what can be learned on the job. This clarity becomes the foundation for your entire selection process, from how you advertise the role to how you assess candidates and make your final decision … with confidence.
When you invest time in getting your position description right, you’re setting yourself up to make better hiring decisions. You’ll know what questions to ask in interviews, what additional assessment tools might come in handy (eg psychometric assessments), and most importantly, what you’re actually looking for in candidates.
What is skills-based hiring?
Skills-based hiring is an approach that prioritises what candidates can do over their formal qualifications, job titles, or where they’ve worked previously. Rather than requiring a specific degree or a certain number of years in a particular role, skills-based hiring focuses on whether someone has the actual capabilities needed to succeed in the position. Sometimes we refer to this as “competency-based hiring”, but that opens up debate on what a competency is, so we’re a fan of this term “skills-based hiring”.
This might sound straightforward, but it represents a shift from traditional hiring practices. It’s tempting to use degrees and prior job titles as proxies for capability. If someone had a university qualification or had worked at a well-known company, we might assume that they had the skills we needed. Skills-based hiring challenges that assumption by asking: can this person actually do what we need them to do?
The rise in popularity of skills-based hiring isn’t arbitrary. Research shows that when organisations focus on skills rather than credentials, they access a wider talent pool, improve diversity, and often find candidates who perform better in the role. It’s particularly relevant in today’s constantly changing work environment, where the skills needed in many roles are evolving faster than traditional education systems can keep up with.
What skills-based hiring means for your recruitment and selection process
Adopting a skills-based approach requires rethinking your selection process from start to finish. Here’s what changes:
Your position description becomes skills-focused
Instead of leading with educational requirements and years of experience, you identify and articulate the specific skills needed for success. This means getting granular about what the person will actually need to do. For example, rather than requiring “five years of marketing experience,” you might specify skills like “ability to analyse campaign data and adjust strategy accordingly” or “experience creating engaging content for social media platforms.”
Your job advertisements look different
When you advertise, you’ll emphasise the skills you’re seeking rather than credentials. This signals to potential applicants that you’re open to people with diverse backgrounds who may have gained relevant skills through different pathways, whether that’s previous roles, volunteer work, side projects, or self-directed learning.
Your candidate screening criteria shift
Instead of filtering CVs based on where someone studied or worked, you’re looking for evidence of the skills you need. This might mean paying more attention to portfolios, projects, or specific achievements that demonstrate capability rather than automatically discounting candidates who don’t tick traditional boxes.
Your assessment methods become more practical
This is where skills-based hiring really comes to life. You’ll design assessments that actually test whether candidates can do what you need them to do. This might include work samples, practical exercises, case studies, or scenario-based questions that reveal how someone
How to implement skills-based hiring: a practical approach
Moving to skills-based hiring doesn’t mean throwing out everything you know about recruitment. Here’s how to implement it effectively.
Start by identifying your essential skills
Go back to your position description and break down the role into the key skills required. Be specific and realistic. What does someone absolutely need to be able to do from day one? What could they learn in their first few months? Distinguish between technical skills, soft skills, and adaptive skills.
Design your assessment around these skills
For each essential skill, think about how you can assess it during the selection process. If you need someone who can write clear reports, ask them to complete a writing exercise. If problem-solving is crucial, present them with a realistic scenario and ask how they’d approach it. If stakeholder management matters, use behavioural interview questions that explore how they’ve navigated complex relationships in the past.
Create evaluation criteria in advance
Before you see any candidates, decide what “good” looks like for each skill you’re assessing. What evidence would show you that someone has this capability? Having clear criteria helps you evaluate candidates consistently and fairly and reduces the risk of unconscious bias creeping into your decisions.
Train your interview panel
Everyone involved in the selection process needs to understand the skills-based approach and how to assess for skills rather than credentials. This might mean learning new interview techniques or assessment methods.
Be prepared to look beyond the obvious candidates
Skills-based hiring often surfaces talented people who might have been overlooked in a traditional process. Stay open-minded and focus on the evidence of skills rather than making assumptions based on someone’s background.
Don't abandon judgment entirely
Skills-based hiring is rigorous, but it doesn’t mean ignoring red flags or cultural fit. You’re still looking for someone who will thrive in your organisation and work well with your team. The difference is that you’re making these judgments based on demonstrated capability rather than credentials alone.
Moving beyond "gut feel" hiring
One of the most powerful benefits of skills-based hiring is that it gets you out of the trap of hiring by “gut feel.” We’ve all heard hiring managers say things like “I just had a good feeling about them” or “They seemed like they’d fit in well.” While intuition has its place, relying on gut feel as your primary decision-making tool is risky because it’s where unconscious bias lives and thrives.
When you hire by gut feel, you’re often responding to factors that have nothing to do with someone’s ability to do the job. You might be drawn to candidates who remind you of yourself, who went to the same university, who share your hobbies, or who simply make you feel comfortable. These aren’t predictors of job performance, but they feel compelling in the moment. The problem is that this approach narrows your talent pool, reinforces homogeneity in your team, and often leads to hiring people who interview well rather than people who will perform well.
Skills-based hiring provides structure that counteracts these unconscious biases. When you assess candidates against predetermined criteria and evaluate their actual demonstrated skills, you’re making decisions based on evidence rather than feelings. This doesn’t mean you become a robot in the hiring process, but it does mean your instincts are informed by objective data. You might still get a feeling about a candidate, but now you can ask yourself: is this feeling based on evidence of their skills, or is it based on something else entirely? That awareness makes all the difference.
We cover unconscious biases in our recruitment skills training.
The reality check: this takes effort
Let’s not kid ourselves: skills-based hiring requires more effort than simply filtering for degrees and job titles. Designing meaningful assessments, evaluating candidates fairly, and potentially widening your candidate pool takes time and expertise. But the investment pays off in better hires, more diverse teams, and access to talent you might otherwise miss.
Getting help can be a game changer
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of overhauling your recruitment process, you’re not alone. Many New Zealand organisations want to embrace skills-based hiring but aren’t sure where to start or don’t have the internal capacity to implement it effectively.
This is where professional support makes all the difference. Whether you need help designing position descriptions that identify the right skills, creating assessment processes that actually test for those skills, or managing the entire recruitment process from start to finish, expert guidance can save you time, reduce costly hiring mistakes, and help you build a stronger team.
Professional recruitment support brings not just expertise in skills-based hiring methodology, but also practical experience in what works in the New Zealand context. You’ll benefit from proven frameworks, assessment tools, and strategies that have been refined across numerous hiring processes.
Similarly, if you have an internal HR team or managers who handle recruitment, investing in recruitment skills training can transform their capability. Learning how to write skills-focused position descriptions, design effective assessments, conduct behavioural interviews, and evaluate candidates objectively are skills that will improve every hire your organisation makes.
Making the shift
As we move into this busy hiring season, there’s no better time to think differently about how you recruit. Skills-based hiring isn’t just a trend; it’s a more effective way to find people who will genuinely succeed in your roles. And it all starts with that foundation we discussed: a great position description that helps you understand exactly what skills you need.
The question isn’t whether you can afford to implement skills-based hiring. It’s whether you can afford not to.
