“Jobs do not require four-year college degrees. Employers do.”

This was what EMSI Burning Glass, a labor market data company, said in its report about shifting to Skills-Based Hiring as a key to growing the US workforce. The research was done in tandem with Harvard Business School and they analysed more than 51 million jobs posted between 2017 and 2020. In the report, they outlined that skills based hiring can widen the pool of applicants during the recruitment process. With more applicants to choose from and without the artificial constraint of a degree, filling in vacant positions would be much easier.

For workers, skills-based hiring could create more opportunities for non-degree holders with non-traditional backgrounds, but will this see the light of day in the Malaysian job market?