Employees are more than their job titles
A few years into my HR career, I wanted to transition to a sales role. I had spent years coaching managers through difficult conversations, building relationships with skeptical employees, and persuading resistant leaders to change course. I could read a room. I could close. I had all of the transferable skills a sales role needed.
Nobody would look past my title, though.
I was Human Resources. That's what my resume said, and that's what hiring managers saw. The conversations I'd navigated, the deals I'd brokered, the stakeholders I'd won over — none of it counted because I hadn't done it in a sales role. I was pigeonholed into a title and a role. I was pigeonholed because the system was looking at the wrong thing.
That experience shapes how I thought about my career and it changed how I advise businesses on hiring.
The Title Trap
Most hiring practices match titles to titles. You need a marketing manager, so you look for someone who has been a marketing manager. You need an operations lead, so you search for operations experience. It feels easy because that’s the way it’s always been done. It’s not safe. It’s not easy. And it doesn’t help propel the business forward.
When you hire by title, you're not hiring for what someone can do. You're hiring for what they've already done, in a context that may look nothing like yours. Titles may be the same from company to company, but the job may be completely different. I’ve been an HR Director (the Head of HR) for a company with 89 employees and HR Manager (also the Head of HR) for a company with 250 employees. Similar job, VERY different title.
When you hire by title, you eliminate a significant pool of capable people who built the right skills through a different path. You’re eliminating a significant number of people based on a few words.
Skills-based hiring flips the sequence. Instead of starting with "what title do we want," you start with "what does this job actually require?" What decisions will this person make? What problems will they solve? What does success look like in 90 days, and what capabilities does it take to get there?
Answer those questions first. Then look for who has them…regardless of what their last job was called.
What You're Missing When You Lead with Titles
A barista who managed a chaotic Saturday morning rush has crisis management skills. A retail clerk who handled returns all day has conflict resolution and customer experience skills. A teacher who designed curriculum has instructional design and project management skills. None of those people may have a title that matches your open role. All of them may be exactly who you need.
The skills are there. The ability is there. But if your job posting requires five years of experience in a specific title, and your ATS is filtering for keywords, those candidates never make it to your desk.
Beyond the individual candidates you miss, there's a broader cost. When employees feel locked into a lane because of their title — when they can see that internal mobility isn't real — they leave. And it’s not always for more money. Often for an organization that will truly see them for the skills and talents they bring to the job, the experience they’ve developed through their careers.
Disengagement and turnover are expensive. Skills-based hiring is one tool that addresses both.
How to Make the Shift
This doesn't require a full overhaul of your hiring process. It starts with a few deliberate changes.
Write job postings around outcomes, not credentials. Instead of "must have a background in X," describe what the person will accomplish and what it takes to do it well.
Build interview questions that surface transferable skills. Ask for specific examples of problem-solving, communication, leadership, and adaptability. Let people show you what they can do through how they think and what they've experienced, not just where they've worked.
Train your hiring managers to ask "can they do this?" rather than "have they done exactly this?" Those are different questions with different answers. If you hire someone that meets 100% of the qualifications you require and desire, you’ll hire someone for the short-term. When you hire someone who doesn’t have every single quality, you’ll give them the opportunity to grow and learn and they’ll stick around for awhile.
If you're in HR, advocate for these shifts internally. The hiring process reflects the organization's assumptions about talent. Those assumptions are worth examining.
A Different Question
The question most hiring processes ask is: does this person fit the pattern we're used to? The better question is: does this person have what this role needs?
I spent years in HR before I realized the system I worked in had a blind spot I'd personally experienced. Skills don't always announce themselves with the right title. Potential doesn't always come packaged in a familiar background.
If you're a business owner, manager, or HR professional trying to hire smarter — or if you're looking at your internal talent and wondering why people keep leaving — I'd encourage you to look at what your process is measuring.
If you'd like to think through what skills-based hiring could look like in your organization, I'm happy to help. Reach out to start the conversation.
-Anne
Donovan HR Solutions
