From Pronouncements to Practice: A Conceptual Framework for the Skills-Based Hiring Implementation Gap

Abstract

Since 2020, the skills-based hiring (SBH) movement has gained momentum as a solution to a longstanding talent shortage and a tool to increase access to opportunity. Industry reports and analysis indicate a widespread shift in hiring attitudes toward skills-first hiring rather than relying on degrees, with reports of a majority of large organizations having eliminated degree requirements for some of their job postings since 2017 (BCG, 2023; Udemy, 2024). However, the most up-to-date firm-level evidence as of 2025 paints a more conservative picture. A 2024 Harvard Business School Project on Managing the Future of Work and the Burning Glass Institute study revealed that while thousands of employers have made their job postings degree-free, the resulting hiring opportunity had actually been realized in fewer than 1 percent of hires, and that about 45 percent of employers that made degree changes did not observe any measurable impact on who they actually hired (Fuller et al., 2024). In this paper, this disconnect (between announced policy and actual hiring actions) is considered a unique and worthy of study phenomenon. The paper builds on labor-market studies, employer surveys and the wider academic literature on the human resource management (HRM) research-practice gap published from 2020 to 2025, to propose a three-level conceptual framework: institutional, organizational and individual/managerial, to explain why adoption of SBH often fails to reach the level of practice. Five research propositions are developed to inform empirical research and implications for HR theory, measurement and practice are discussed. Keywords

Skills-based hiring, talent acquisition, HRM implementation gap, credentialism, degree requirements, evidence-based HRM