What is Skills-Based Hiring and How Can Charities Use it?

As the name suggests, skills-based hiring involves recruiting and shortlisting candidates based on their skills and competencies. Candidates who demonstrate the abilities needed to successfully fulfil a role provide charities and organisations with immediate value when they join the team.

When the recruitment market is challenging, such as when recruiters face an abundance of applications, skills-based hiring offers a way to focus on the best candidates.

This guide explains how skills-based recruitment works, why it matters and how to implement the approach in your charity.

How does skills-based hiring work?

The key components of skills-based recruitment include:

• Identifying candidates who can demonstrate relevant competencies.
• Looking for transferable skills, even if candidates gained those through different roles or sectors.
• Using practical assessments during the recruitment process to see how candidates can apply their skills to the open role.

Hiring based on skill sets allows organisations to bring in fantastic candidates with experience across different sectors and roles, giving them unique, transferable skills. Skills-based hiring is also a fairer recruitment practice, as it allows organisations to find the right person for the role by focusing on skills and reducing bias.

Traditional recruitment methods tend to focus on hiring applicants with relevant qualifications and sector-specific experience, which are not necessarily essential requirements for all roles. In contrast, skills-based hiring focuses on what a candidate can do, placing greater emphasis on abilities over education and job experience.

Why skills-based hiring matters in today’s recruitment landscape

Skills-based hiring isn’t new, but it is becoming increasingly popular in recruitment. The approach is gaining traction for multiple reasons:

• AI applications: The recruitment market has been seeing an increase in AI-generated applications, making it difficult for recruiters to identify candidates based on their genuinely unique skills and experiences. Recruiters can leverage skills-based hiring to cut through high volumes of AI applications and spot the talent their charity needs.
• Talent shortage: Although the market is often flooded with candidates, skills gaps still exist in some areas. In the charity sector, fundraising roles in particular have lower levels of applicants.
• Shifting candidate expectations: Despite it being a recruiter’s market, the candidate experience is just as important. Candidates are applying for charity roles they’re passionate about, even when they come from private- and public-sector backgrounds, because they know they have the required skills. Recruiters should be open to different backgrounds and avoid creating a strict picture of their ideal candidate.
• Inclusive hiring: A strong and effective workforce needs diversity. Hiring based on demonstrable skills, rather than requiring a strict list of qualifications, years of experience and specific knowledge, creates the flexibility needed to access a far more diverse pool of candidates.

Benefits of skills-based hiring for charities

Skills-based hiring is a valuable lever for charities and organisations in other industries alike, offering a multitude of benefits to the workforce.

More diverse talent

Candidates gain skills from a variety of roles and industries throughout their careers, which can often be applied more effectively to different jobs than theory learned through education.

Placing more focus on skills when shortlisting opens opportunities for candidates who may be overlooked by traditional recruitment methods, creating a more diverse candidate pool. For example, career shifters can use transferable skills to offer new perspectives and ideas to fill a much-needed skills gap. People with disabilities may have learned valuable skills through non-traditional training or work schemes that recruiters might not be familiar with, but can demonstrate the perfect skillset your organisation needs, as well as a personal passion for your cause.

Improved hiring accuracy and candidate fit

While a candidate’s years of experience certainly shouldn’t be overlooked, they don’t guarantee the skills you need or make them the ideal fit for a role. Skills can be learned quickly in a range of settings and can provide immediate value when a new hire is onboarded into their role. 

It can be tempting to favour candidates with a long tenure in the same industry, as this feels like a natural progression. By relying less on employment length, and instead seeking out the specific skills required, recruiters can find candidates who can more accurately meet the role’s needs and demonstrate clear expertise.

Increased employee retention

When people are hired based on the skills they’ve worked to develop, many feel a sense of accomplishment and pride when they can put those skills to good use, especially in a charity setting. Knowing their hard work secured them a position working towards a cause they believe in gives employees a strong sense of purpose at work. 

Employees who feel valued by an employer that recognises their skills are more likely to stay with the organisation for longer, resulting in better retention rates.

Better support for resource-challenged teams

Regular training and development opportunities are essential benefits to offer candidates, but charities often have tighter training budgets. 

This is where skills-based hiring can offer a significant advantage. Recruiting people who already have the required skills, rather than those with only education or tangential experience, means there will be less need to train the new hires.

How to adopt a skills-based hiring approach

Skills-based hiring doesn’t require a complete overhaul of current processes, but rather, a reframing of the approach at each step.

1. Redefine job descriptions to prioritise skills over years of experience or education.
2. Identify core and transferable non-sector-specific competencies.
3. Introduce skills-based assessments or tasks that allow candidates to demonstrate how they could apply their talents to the vacancy.
4. Train hiring managers to evaluate skills effectively, without being influenced by irrelevant factors, such as a lack of prior experience in the non-profit sector.
5. Use structured interviews that focus on capabilities.

Skills-based hiring vs traditional recruitment

Skills-based hiring builds on the fundamentals of traditional recruitment, but to shift your approach, it’s important to understand the differences.

Challenges to consider with skills-based hiring

Recruiters should be aware of potential barriers to implementing skills-based hiring and how to overcome them.

• Internal resistance to change: Current recruitment processes get candidates through the door, making it difficult for colleagues to see the benefits of changing the approach. Surface the limitations of current recruitment, such as high turnover rates or low-quality candidates. 
• Lack of structured assessment processes: Candidate assessments don’t need to be complex, and can make hiring fairer. A simple spreadsheet can be used to set up the framework, allowing hiring managers to take notes and score candidates consistently.
• Time or resource constraints: Making the shift to a skills-based approach doesn’t have to be immediate; a gradual shift can ease the transition and reduce impacts on limited resources.

FAQs about skills-based hiring

What does a skills-based interview look like?

Interviews will still include a variety of questions, allowing the interview panel to get to know the candidate holistically. The difference lies in the skills-focused questions. For example, in a traditional interview, an interviewer might ask, “Can you tell me about your previous charity experience and how it’s relevant to this role?” A skills-based question could be, “Can you tell me how this [specific skill] you gained in your previous public sector job could be applied to this role?”

Does the skills-based approach work for all roles?

Skills-based hiring is appropriate for most roles. However, entry-level positions may not benefit from it, as applicants are less likely to have the relevant skills and will be hired based on their knowledge and education.

Start building a skills-based hiring strategy with CharityJob

Skills-based hiring is an ideal solution for many charities looking to hire for specific skill sets and welcome a more diverse range of candidates into their organisation.

Post a job with CharityJob Apply and get free access to our end-to-end Applicant Tracking System (ATS) tools designed to improve applicant diversity. Our ATS includes a wide range of features, including CV filtering and screening questions, that help you identify candidates with the skills you need.

We offer four job ad packages to suit your needs and budget. Choosing the right package is important because it determines the pool size, type, and quality of candidates your ad will reach.

If you’re not sure which is right for your non-profit organisation, contact us for personalised advice. Give us a call on 020 8939 8430, or email us at info@charityjob.co.uk