Skills-Based Hiring Reaches 70% Adoption — NACE Survey Confirms the Shift Is Accelerating
The News
The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) released its Job Outlook 2026 survey, finding that 70% of employers now report using skills-based hiring practices, up from 65% the previous year. The annual survey, a benchmark for early-career hiring trends, also found that employers are increasingly looking beyond GPA and academic credentials when evaluating candidates.
Among the key findings: 73% of employers that do not screen by GPA consider demonstrated competency proficiency when making hiring decisions, compared to 67% that do screen by GPA. The data suggests that skills-based practices are becoming embedded across hiring processes rather than remaining a niche approach. However, NACE also found that many students and recent graduates remain unfamiliar with the concept of skills-based hiring, pointing to a communication gap between employer practice and candidate awareness.
The survey also tracked which competencies employers value most: critical thinking, teamwork, and communication topped the list, consistent with prior years. The shift toward skills-based assessment is most pronounced among large employers (1,000+ employees) and in technology-adjacent industries.
Why It Matters
This matters because the NACE data puts real numbers on a trend that has felt anecdotal for years. The move from 65% to 70% adoption in a single year is meaningful — it suggests skills-based hiring is past the early-adopter phase and entering mainstream practice. For TA leaders, the implication is clear: if seven in ten employers are already doing this, candidates will come to expect it. Organisations that still default to credential-based screening are increasingly the exception, not the rule.
The candidate awareness gap is the more subtle finding. Employers may be doing skills-based hiring, but if candidates don't know that, they're self-selecting out based on outdated assumptions about degree requirements. Closing that communication gap — telling candidates explicitly that you assess for skills, not just credentials — is a quick win that costs nothing but a job description rewrite.
Taking Action
All action is situated in your corporate context. These are starting points, not prescriptions — choose what fits.
Connect
Who to talk with in your enterprise
Your early-career recruiting team — review your current job descriptions for graduate and entry-level roles. How many still list degree requirements as a hard filter? Rewrite them to say "or equivalent experience/portfolio" and measure whether application volume and quality changes.
Your campus recruiting leads — brief them on the NACE findings. Candidates don't know you're doing skills-based hiring unless you tell them. Update your employer brand messaging for campus events to emphasise competency assessment over credential screening.
Your talent analytics team — pull your last 12 months of graduate hires and compare performance ratings between those hired through skills-based assessment vs. credential-only screening. Build the internal business case with your own data.
Inspect
What to take a closer look at
Run a job description audit: take 20 of your most recent entry-level and early-career job descriptions and count how many mention specific skills and competencies as screening criteria versus how many default to degree requirements. Then benchmark against the NACE finding that 70% of employers are using skills-based practices — are you ahead, behind, or about average? Specific tool to look at: your ATS's candidate screening configuration — are skills-based knockout questions in place, or is the system still filtering by degree first?
Reflect
What to think about more deeply
The NACE data surfaces an uncomfortable truth: skills-based hiring is easier to adopt in principle than in practice. Most organisations say they value it; fewer have redesigned their screening processes to actually do it. The difference between the 70% who say they use skills-based hiring and the much smaller share who have removed degree requirements from their ATS is where the real work lives. What would change if your TA team treated the credential filter as an exception that needs to be justified rather than a default that needs to be overridden?