Skills based hiring: which employers dropped degree requirements?

What is skills based hiring?

Skills based hiring (also written skills-based hiring) is hiring that tests what a candidate can do instead of relying on the degree on their resume. The US Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the federal government's human resources agency, defines it as "evaluating candidates based on their ability to perform the work using tools like job simulations, skills tests, or other structured assessments."

A job simulation is a task copied from the real job. A structured assessment is a test every candidate takes the same way.

OPM adds two points that matter for someone without a degree. Its 2022 guidance says the approach values skills whether they were learned in a classroom, on the job or on your own. It also names one aim: making it easier for people without a four-year degree to show they have the skills to compete for federal jobs.

Which employers have dropped degree requirements?

The US federal government and four states have announced changes to degree rules on their own sites, and Google has said its own certificates qualify applicants for some of its jobs. The table lists what each said and when.

Employers and governments that announced changes to degree requirements, in date order. Source: each organization's own page, read October 8, 2026 (Maryland: archived copy captured January 9, 2023).

Did hiring change after degree requirements were dropped?

The 2024 study of large firms, by the Burning Glass Institute (a labor-market research group) and Harvard Business School, found a small net change. Where a firm dropped a degree requirement, the share of hires without a bachelor's degree rose by about 3.5 percentage points (for example, from 10 in 100 hires to 13.5 in 100). Roles that dropped a requirement were 3.6% of all roles. Spread over all US hires, the study put the net gain at about 97,000 out of about 77 million in 2023: "not even 1 in 700 hires last year."

The study followed 11,300 roles (one occupation at one employer) with enough hiring to measure for at least a year before and after the change. It used the career histories of 65 million US workers. Its hiring figures stop before the federal Merit Hiring Plan of May 2025.

Two more findings from the 2024 Burning Glass Institute report:

• About 45% of the firms removed the degree line from job postings but hired much as before; the report calls this a change "in name only."
• Nearly all of the real change in hiring came from 37% of the firms that dropped a requirement.

One government has reported a result. In a January 9, 2023, release, Maryland's governor said the change had led to a 41% year-over-year increase (compared with the year before) in state hires without a degree. The release gave no method.

Do employers still require degrees?

Yes, for some jobs. OPM says minimum experience or education rules still apply when the law requires them or when they are tied to the job's qualifications. Pennsylvania's announcement says many of the remaining 8% of state jobs require a degree by law.

Older research measured the gap between what ads asked for and what workers held. Dismissed by Degrees, a 2017 report by Harvard Business School, Accenture (a consulting firm) and Grads of Life (a nonprofit), studied 26 million job postings and surveyed 600 business and human resources leaders. It found that in 2015, 67% of production-supervisor job postings asked for a college degree. Of the people already doing that job, 16% had one.

The same report found that three in five employers reject qualified middle-skill candidates with relevant experience in favor of recent college graduates. Middle-skill candidates are people trained for jobs that need more than high school but less than a four-year degree. That was a 2017 survey of employers' views, before the announcements in the table.

Our certificate vs degree guide lists the entry-level education the US Bureau of Labor Statistics gives for six office and IT jobs.

Does skills based hiring mean certificates matter more?

Not according to the official sources we checked. Under OPM's description, skills count whether learned in a class, on the job or alone, so a certificate is one possible route. None of the sources says employers prefer certificates or certifications over degrees.

Three sources mention certificates or certifications directly:

• Colorado's 2022 order treats skills and experience as substitutes for degrees and for certifications, so in Colorado state hiring, a certification can be replaced too.
• OPM's 2024 guidance on hiring for artificial intelligence (AI) work says the federal workforce needs skills "that may not yet be captured in traditional education or certification frameworks," meaning standard courses and exams do not yet cover them.
• Google's July 2020 announcement covers its own Career Certificates and eligible roles at Google only.

A certificate shows you finished a course; a certification shows you passed an exam set by an industry body. Our guide to the certificate vs certification difference explains both. If the jobs you want name a certification, our list of certifications worth getting shows which ones job ads mention, and our certification strategy guide covers the order to take them in.

What should you do first?

Spend one evening reading job ads before you pay for any course or exam. If you have a target job, pick it and two related titles. If not, try IT support (help desk), office administrator and bookkeeper, or find more titles in our career guides. Search one title plus your city on a big job site such as Indeed and read 10 ads. Do the other two titles if you have time.

For each ad, write down three things: whether it requires a degree or accepts experience in its place, whether it mentions a skills test or assessment, and which skills and certifications it names. If you live in Colorado, Maryland, Pennsylvania or Utah, add three state-government ads for the same titles, since those states announced the changes in the table.

Then match what you found to a route. If the ads accept experience in place of a degree, a certification is one way to show a skill they name; start with the certifications worth getting. If they require a degree you do not have, the certificate vs degree guide gives college costs and entry levels. If the ads are mixed, start with the ones that accept experience and note which employers posted them. In every case, you have spent no money and know what employers near you ask for.

What we did not check

• We did not count how many job ads ask for a degree. Our job-ad data from Adzuna (a job-ad search site) counts certification phrases in ads, not degree requirements.
• We did not check whether hiring changed in state or federal jobs after the announcements.
• The table lists the announcements we checked, not every employer that dropped a degree requirement. We checked one company announcement, Google's from July 2020, but not whether it still applies.
• We found no official list of the skills employers look for in general.

Sources

• US Office of Personnel Management: Rule of Many and skills-based hiring, Merit Hiring Plan, May 29, 2025, guidance on the June 2020 executive order on federal hiring, May 19, 2022 and skills-based hiring guidance for artificial intelligence work, 2024.
• Burning Glass Institute and Harvard Business School, Skills-Based Hiring report, 2024.
• Harvard Business School, Dismissed by Degrees news release, October 25, 2017.
• Pennsylvania Office of Administration, Executive Order 2023-03 announcement.
• Utah governor's office, skills-first hiring initiative.
• Colorado governor's office, executive order on skills-based hiring.
• Maryland governor, archived copy, captured January 9, 2023.
• Google, digital jobs program announcement.

Edited by Jere Salmisto · Data checked October 8, 2026