July 9, 2025

Turning a Skills-Based Hiring Commitment into Real Progress

While many employers are moving beyond degree-based hiring, there’s often a disconnect between intention and implementation.  Despite growing adoption, progress remains uneven. While 37% of companies have successfully increased hiring of talent without four-year degrees, the majority—about 63%—have made limited progress or even regressed after initial efforts.

Why Progress Stalls After Initial Efforts

A key challenge lies in managing the transition away from traditional methods. Even when degrees are removed as formal requirements, hiring managers often default to using educational background as a proxy for durable (soft) skills, especially when under pressure to fill roles quickly. This underscores the need for consistent, organization-wide change. Embedding skills-based hiring criteria into every stage of the talent lifecycle—from job descriptions to interviews and performance reviews—requires more than isolated policy updates.  Instead, it calls for a structured skills-based hiring change management approach that reinforces new behaviors and expectations across teams. In addition, sustaining momentum also depends on institutional commitment. Without aligned leadership priorities, reformed processes, and supportive systems, early wins can quickly stall. A lack of institutional support and process reform often prevents skills-first hiring from becoming embedded and lasting. To that end, turning a skills-based hiring commitment into real progress requires more than just rewriting job descriptions. It means shifting mindsets, modernizing legacy practices, and applying thoughtful change management strategies to build lasting pathways for talent without four-year degrees.

Real Skill-First Case Studies, Proven Results

Many organizations are turning their skills-based hiring commitments into measurable transformation. By rethinking hiring processes, challenging bias, and investing in long-term solutions, these companies show the power of a skills-first hiring strategy. Their real-world success stories offer proof that intentional action can close hiring gaps and create meaningful career opportunities for individuals without four-year degrees.

Case 1: Cisco

Before joining the OneTen coalition as a founding member in 2020, Cisco almost exclusively hired talent with four-year degrees. Upon joining the coalition, Cisco made a bold commitment to a skills-first hiring transformation aimed at improving equity and inclusion. Their experience reveals how structured change management can bring skills-based recruiting to life—and drive impact
  1. Understand and Communicate Your “Why”
An established, values-driven company, Cisco’s leadership explored its role in advancing workforce equity and addressing barriers for underrepresented employees. For example, earlier initiatives, such as Cisco’s “12 Actions for Social Justice”, helped lay the foundation for the shift to skills-based hiring, setting the stage for deep collaboration with OneTen.
  1. Empower Leaders with Relevant Experience
Cisco selected leaders with relevant personal and professional insights in equity and inclusion to guide its transition. As a result, these leaders helped ensure alignment with Cisco’s inclusion goals and fostered a culture where a four-year degree was no longer viewed as a requirement for success.
  1. Secure Budget and Engage Stakeholders Early
Upon joining OneTen, Cisco leadership made the decision to centralize funding and launched a comprehensive internal roadshow. In doing so, the company built alignment and buy-in across senior leaders and hiring managers around the company’s shift to competency-based hiring.
  1. Partner with Hiring Managers
Cisco collaborated directly with hiring managers, offering education on how to evaluate skills over traditional academic credentials. Moreover, managers received hands-on support to develop skills-first job descriptions and more equitable, inclusive interview processes.
  1. Prioritize the Needs of New Talent
To help skills-first hires thrive, Cisco launched cohort-based hiring, which fostered community and belonging. These hires benefited from tailored onboarding, continuous training, and regular check-ins to ensure a smooth first year.
  1. Measure Results and Adjust as Needed
Cisco tracked retention and promotion data across its skills-first talent. The results were strong: OneTen hires had a 96% retention rate and strong promotion outcomes. To support long-term success, Cisco also monitored skill-role alignment to ensure hires had room to grow, and adjusted placements as needed to reduce turnover. Ultimately, Cisco’s skills-based hiring approach did more than improve retention—it opened career pathways for talented individuals based on potential and capability, not credentials. Their case illustrates that a clear vision, coupled with intentional action, can turn skills-first hiring into a lasting organizational advantage

Case 2: Cleveland Clinic

In December 2020, amid Ohio’s economic challenges and a widening wage gap, Cleveland Clinic made a bold commitment to build, scale, and sustain a skills-first hiring culture that could expand equitable career pathways for local talent. As a founding member of the OneTen coalition, Cleveland Clinic partnered with OneTen to advance this mission through targeted actions and transformative skills-based practices:
  1. Recredential Roles
Cleveland Clinic used OneTen’s guidelines to identify which roles to target. Specifically, the team re-credentialed or rewrote more than 260 job descriptions to eliminate unnecessary four-year degree requirements and clearly define the skills required for each role.
  1. Listen to the Community
To build trust and engagement, the Clinic focused on strengthening relationships with the local community. This involved grassroots outreach, connecting directly with community members and talent developers and hosting career expos.
  1. Create Career Mobility Through Apprenticeship Programs
To strengthen its talent pipeline, Cleveland Clinic launched apprenticeship programs offering opportunities to gain new skills, grow professional networks, and transition into full-time employment.
  1. Provide Talent with Ongoing Support and Training
Cleveland Clinic provided focused support for participants, including executive sponsorship and mentorship. The organization also addressed key barriers to retention, such as access to transportation and childcare. By 2021, the results were clear. Cleveland Clinic had hired and promoted over 1,600 individuals from the OneTen talent pool—successfully expanding career pathways and increasing retention among non-degreed employees.

Case 3: U.S Department of the Interior

Historically, the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) relied on self-assessment questionnaires and resume reviews to evaluate candidates—resulting in only a 50% success rate in candidate selection. In May 2022, DOI adopted a more skills-centered hiring process, enabling candidates to demonstrate their abilities through validated assessments. This shift created a more equitable and effective hiring system.  By reducing reliance on degrees, educational history, and self-reported skills, the DOI allowed job seekers to showcase what they can do, not just where they studied.
  1. Education and Training
DOI educated its workforce through webinars, training sessions, and industry demos. These efforts were supported by an internal Assessment Practices Guide that outlined foundational skills-based evaluation methods.
  1. Policy and Process Development
To reinforce the shift, the agency updated its hiring policies—moving away from self-assessments in favor of skills-based assessments. They also introduced an automated online platform to streamline the process.
  1. Stakeholder Engagement
To ensure alignment across departments, DOI conducted regular working group meetings, listening sessions, and town halls across its bureaus. This fostered buy-in and surfaced valuable insights from internal stakeholders.
  1. Monitoring and Evaluation
DOI launched an agency-wide review process to track progress and continuously improve hiring practices. As a result, the department maintained momentum and alignment with its skills-first hiring goals.

Together, these case studies show how organizations like Cisco, Cleveland Clinic, and DOI have successfully managed the shift to skills-first hiring by aligning internal systems, engaging stakeholders, and building lasting pathways for talent without four-year degrees. Through structured change, they’ve demonstrated what’s possible when employers take action to modernize their workforce strategies.

10 Best Practices for Implementing Skills-Based Hiring

Building on the insights from the case studies, the following best practices offer a framework for organizations ready to adopt and sustain a skills-first hiring approach. Importantly, each step plays a critical role in driving meaningful and lasting workforce transformation.

Articulate the Vision Start by developing a clear, organization-wide narrative that explains why skills-based hiring matters. To be effective, this message should align with business goals, talent needs, and the broader shift away from outdated hiring practices. By helping leaders, hiring managers, and teams understand the “why” behind the change, companies can generate buy-in across functions. Recredential Jobs to Support Skills-Based Hiring Use tools like OneTen’s Skills-Based Job Description Checklist to recredential jobs to align with evolving skills demands. In doing so, eliminate unnecessary degree requirements, define essential and adjacent skills, and create a transparent competency-based hiring process. Notably, Research from OneTen shows that skills-based job descriptions outperform degree-based postings in application rates, clarity, and perceived candidate fit. Establish the Role of Technology To operationalize this shift, technology must play a central role. Leverage tools such as skills mapping software, AI-driven assessments, and skills-based applicant tracking systems (ATS). These technologies can identify skill gaps, better match talent to roles, and streamline hiring workflows. Engage Key Stakeholders Early Form a cross-functional team that includes HR, hiring managers, and department leads. From the beginning, co-create the skills-first strategy, and build early alignment through input sessions, roadshows, or pilot initiatives. Early engagement minimizes resistance and strengthens implementation. Clearly Communicate the Benefits. Tailor messaging to different audiences—senior executives, people managers, and frontline employees. Above all, highlight how a skills-first strategy improves business agility, broadens the talent pool, and enables internal mobility. Consistent communication fosters transparency and encourages buy-in.  Research also shows that clear and frequent communication is linked to more successful change management outcomes. Provide Training and Development Invest in continuous training for HR teams and hiring managers on how to assess job-relevant skills. Use structured interviews, durable (soft) skills assessments, and realistic job previews to support consistent evaluation. Research shows that organizations that equip employees with these essential skills are more successful in sustaining change adoption. Pilot the Initiative Start with a pilot program to test, learn, and refine. Focus on a manageable set of roles, then scale based on feedback and results. Pilots help uncover early challenges and build proof points for broader implementation. Proactively Anticipate and Address Resistance Identify likely points of resistance—such as concerns about nontraditional candidates or perceptions around soft skills. Use case studies, success stories, and training to reinforce confidence in the skills-based model. Research shows that proactively addressing resistance helps “unfreeze” old habits, encouraging adoption of new practices Measure, Learn, and Refine Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to track hiring outcomes, retention, and internal movement. Use this data to improve your competency-based hiring strategy and stay aligned with evolving workforce needs. Reinforce the Change Celebrate early wins and integrate skills-first practices into broader talent development systems, including promotions and career progression. Leverage OneTen change management tools and coalition Communities of Practice to connect with peers and stay informed on the latest effective strategies for skills-first transformation.

Ready to Put Skills-Based Hiring Into Practice?

At OneTen, we’re driving a skills-first movement to unlock career opportunities for talent without four-year degrees. We create skills-first strategies and solutions that help companies build and retain a winning workforce. To learn more, visit skillsright.org/skills-first.