en
Skip to main contentWant to shift to skills-based hiring, but not sure where to start? You’re not alone.
Most talent leaders now recognize the importance of hiring for skills in many roles but are hesitant to make the shift. In Korn Ferry’s Talent Trends 2025 survey, nearly 40% acknowledge the value of skills-based hiring—yet only 17% feel ready to implement it.
If you want to transform and grow your business, then the most important area to focus on is hiring for critical skills.
What makes a skill “critical,” and how is it different from other fundamental skills your organization needs?
“Critical skills are those most closely linked to strategic business challenges, they're the skills your organization needs to help it transform and stay ahead in the future, rather than just perform day-to-day operations,” explains Karin Visser of the Korn Ferry Institute (KFI).
This distinction is important. While fundamental skills help maintain current operations, critical skills drive transformation and growth.
Think of soft skills like adaptability in the face of technological change or the capability to use emerging technologies like AI—these are the critical skills that shape your organization's future.
For talent acquisition (TA) leaders, starting with critical skills makes strategic sense. Nearly a quarter of organizations cite “acquiring talent with needed skills” as their top challenge for 2025, our Talent Trends 2025 report reveals.
But how do you identify which skills are truly critical for your organization?
To identify the critical skills your organization needs, take a systematic approach that starts with strategy and ends with validation. Here’s how to break down this process into manageable steps.
The foundation for identifying critical skills lies in your organization’s strategic priorities.
“The most important step is to make sure that as an organization, you really know what your strategic priorities are,” emphasizes Visser. “Where do we want to go in the future, and what is needed for that?”
This strategic foundation requires you to:
Once you understand where your organization needs to go, the next step is to assess your current capabilities. This involves a comprehensive audit of your existing workforce ability and analyzing it against future needs to identify gaps.
“You need to understand the responsibilities in the day-to-day life of the role and home in on what skills make someone in that role successful,” explains Korn Ferry’s Shanda Mints.
You need to look at:
To perform this analysis, leaders can use skills assessments. These can be done at scale across the organization.
This data-led approach helps create a clear picture of your current skill landscape and see where gaps might exist now and as the organization transforms.
An essential part of your skills gap analysis is gathering input from various stakeholders, including:
“Have conversations with your experts and ask them to describe their day—how they go about their work," advises Mints. “These conversations help you identify which skills are critical for transformation, separating the must-haves from the nice-to-haves.”
The final step is validating your identified skills and determining their priorities. Consider:
Use data gathered from assessments as well as stakeholder input to validate your analysis. This will help you prioritize skills that drive transformation rather than just maintain operations.
Once you've identified your critical skills, the next challenge is acquiring them.
For talent acquisition teams, this means developing strategic approaches to both attract new talent and support internal skill development.
The future of hiring demands a fundamental shift. Traditional methods of screening candidates—based on qualifications, such as degrees and years of experience—need to evolve toward a more skills-focused approach.
“Testing candidates to see if they have the skills is the way to go,” explains Visser. “It could be that someone doesn't seem to have a lot of experience, but they might have acquired those skills in different ways.”
This means looking beyond traditional credentials. “It shouldn’t actually matter if they went to college to learn a programming language or if they watched a bunch of YouTube training guides, so long as they have practical experience with the tools and know how to use them,” says Mints.
Talent leaders are already adapting their assessment approaches, as we discovered in our Talent Trends 2025 research. Most organizations evaluate candidates using a combination of:
To effectively hire for critical skills, start by embedding critical skill requirements clearly in job descriptions—identifying which skills are nonnegotiable. Map the market to understand where these skills can be found, even in nontraditional sources and backgrounds.
Then, implement skills-focused candidate assessment methods during hiring, including behavioral interviews and skills tests.
Success in acquiring critical skills requires more than just strategic hiring. Building internal capabilities is just as important.
To strengthen your talent pool, you need to:
“A successful transformation needs everyone to evolve together,” says Visser. “When you focus only on bringing in new talent, you create a skills divide within your organization. The key is developing your existing talent alongside strategic hiring.”
Critical skills for any organization are evolving faster than ever. “With technical skills, you need a fortune teller to know what you’re going to need in the future,” says Mints. “Technologies change all the time. What was crucial yesterday, like COBOL programming, we never see anymore. Today it’s Python and AI; tomorrow it could be something else.”
So how do you stay ahead? “The most important thing is to review your strategic priorities regularly,” Visser advises. “Instead of only doing it once every three years, organizations should review them every year or even every six months.”
Focus on developing an agile approach to identifying and acquiring skills. While technical skills may shift, core behavioral competencies remain consistent. Adaptability, empathy, and collaboration will always be valuable as you build your critical skills-first hiring strategy.
The journey to identifying critical skills is the first step towards becoming a skills-based organization. While knowing which skills will drive your organization forward is essential, implementing a comprehensive skills strategy requires a broader perspective.
From workforce planning to hiring strategies and performance evaluation, every aspect of talent management needs to align with your skills-based approach.
If you’re ready to hire for critical skills, see our comprehensive guide to Skills-Based Hiring and Talent Management.
Stay on top of the latest leadership news with This Week in Leadership - delivered weekly to your inbox.
