The push to focus on skills-based hiring for federal jobs dates back to the first Trump administration. The Biden White House has continued these efforts.
The General Services Administration will be using a skills-based hiring approach for IT cybersecurity jobs in its planned Polaris and Alliant 3 governmentwide contracts, the White House announced Wednesday.
Skills-based hiring is a method that de-emphasizes requirements for educational degrees and years of experience for jobs where they’re not necessary, instead stressing the use of testing for actual skills needed to do the job.
Just over half of the U.S. workforce has post-high school education, per 2022 data, according to the Lumina Foundation.