What is skills-based hiring?

How skills-based hiring is defined

The US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) says skills-based hiring "helps hiring managers focus on what candidates know how to do, not where they learned it." It "values all relevant skills for the role at hand, whether they are learned in the classroom, on the job, or on one's own" (OPM, May 2022).

In US federal hiring, the approach is set out in policy and law:

• Executive Order 13932 (June 26, 2020): Directs agencies to increase the use of valid, competency-based assessments as an alternative to relying on education credentials to determine qualifications.
• Chance to Compete Act of 2024 (Public Law 118-188, December 23, 2024): Defines a technical assessment as a position-specific tool that allows for the demonstration of job-related skills, abilities, knowledge, and competencies, is based on a job analysis, and does not solely or principally rely on a self-assessment from an automated examination. For three years after enactment, agencies must prefer technical assessments to the maximum extent practicable when hiring into the competitive service (Congress.gov).
• OPM Merit Hiring Plan: Calls for skills-based hiring, eliminating unnecessary degree requirements, and rigorous, job-related assessments. It ended the use of self-rating questionnaires for rating and ranking candidates by September 30, 2025, with some exceptions (OPM, August 2025).

These rules apply to federal agencies. The method itself, which starts with job analysis, is one any employer can use. OPM's competency-based assessment framework asks teams to identify the essential tasks of the job, map those tasks to the competencies needed to perform them, decide which competencies are essential on day one, and document how each competency links to observable job performance. It gives priority to assessments such as work samples, simulations, structured interviews with anchored rating scales, applied knowledge or skill tests, situational judgment tests, writing samples, and coding challenges.

Why skills-based hiring matters for talent teams

OPM's 2022 guidance gives several reasons for the shift:

• Wider pools: It makes it easier for people without a four-year degree to show they have the skills to compete, which expands the pool of potential applicants.
• More accurate assessment: Hiring managers rely more on professionally developed, competency-based assessments and less on questionnaires where applicants score themselves.
• Fewer reposted jobs: Hiring managers get the skilled candidates they need the first time around, rather than reposting a role when the first pool lacked the right skills.

Job analysis also supports defensibility. The federal Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures say validity studies should be based on a review of information about the job, which should include a job analysis except in limited cases. This page is a general overview, not legal advice.

How Findem approaches skills-based hiring

Findem's assessments are built to show what candidates can do rather than where they have been. The platform covers technical skill tests, coding simulations, and behavioral, cognitive, role-based, and industry-specific assessments, with 200,000+ questions across 500+ skills, vetted by 2,000+ subject matter experts. Each assessment is developed with input from psychologists and data scientists, validated for difficulty and fairness, and reviewed by multiple parties before deployment. AI proctoring runs throughout every session.

In sourcing, Findem focuses AI on skills and experience signals so teams can engage a broader, more qualified candidate pool while mitigating biases that demographic cues may evoke. Success Signals are verified patterns in a person's background, behavior, and impact, created by recruiters, search professionals, and people leaders. The Intelligent Job Post adds a skills assessment built for the specific role where the role calls for it, and shows how each candidate measures up against each must-have skill, grounded in their screening answers.

Findem's AI does not reject candidates or make hiring decisions. People review, approve, or override its outputs before they inform a hiring decision.