Every few months another big employer announces it’s scrapping degree requirements. Great headline. Bold statement. Sounds like progress.

But here’s the awkward bit nobody puts in the press release. Most of those companies are still hiring graduates anyway. The degree requirement is dying on paper long before it dies in practice, and that gap is exactly where good candidates get lost, and where Chichester employers either get ahead of the curve or fall behind it.

How the Degree Requirement Is Dying, and Why Nobody Told the Job Spec

Skills-based hiring has gone from a nice idea to a genuine movement. The numbers are hard to ignore.

The Numbers Behind the Shift

·       85% of employers now say they use some form of skills-based hiring.

·       53% have publicly removed degree requirements from at least some roles, up from just 30% the year before.

·       Only 18% of job postings still list a formal degree requirement, and education requirements have fallen across 87% of occupational sectors.

·       Dropping a degree requirement from a job advert brings in 15 to 30% more applicants.

On paper, the degree requirement really is dying. Quickly.

Say One Thing, Hire Another

Here’s the twist. Research from Harvard Business School and the Burning Glass Institute looked at actual hiring data from companies that publicly dropped degree requirements. Fewer than 1 in 700 new hires at those firms were people without a bachelor’s degree.

In other words, plenty of employers are saying the right thing in their careers page and doing exactly what they’ve always done in the interview room. The requirement disappears from the advert but somehow reappears in the shortlist.

Why Job Specs Are the Last to Catch Up

Most job specs were written years ago, then quietly recycled every time a role comes back around. Nobody sits down and asks whether a degree was ever actually necessary. It just gets carried forward, out of habit rather than evidence.

If your process still screens on qualifications rather than capability, you’re not hiring for 2026. You’re hiring for whichever year that job spec was last touched.

If You’re Job Hunting Without a Degree

If you’re on the other side of this, applying without a degree, the same gap works in your favour, provided you play it right. A few honest questions are worth asking before you apply:

·       Are you actually suitable for the role based on what you can do, not just what’s missing from your CV?

·       Is the seniority level realistic for your experience, degree or no degree?

·       Does the criteria in the advert genuinely rule you out, or is it just inherited wording nobody’s reviewed?

·       Can you demonstrate the core skills clearly, with real examples, rather than assuming your experience speaks for itself?

Employers who’ve genuinely moved to skills-based hiring want to see proof, not just confidence. Give them proof, and the missing degree matters a lot less than you’d think.

Is Your Recruitment Process Ready? What Chichester Recruitment Does Differently

Saying you’ve dropped the degree requirement is easy. Actually hiring differently is harder. That’s the part we help Chichester employers get right.

Are They Suitable, Skills First, Degree Second?

We assess candidates on what they can actually do, not what’s printed on a certificate. A brilliant operations manager who came up through the job rather than a lecture theatre is still a brilliant operations manager. Software, and plenty of tired hiring habits, would never even get them in the room.

In practice, that means we lean on things a degree was only ever a rough proxy for anyway:

·       Real work examples and outcomes, not just job titles.

·       Structured conversations that test how someone actually thinks and solves problems.

·       Reference checks that focus on delivery, not just tenure.

None of that is complicated. It just takes more effort than filtering by qualification, which is exactly why so few employers do it properly.

Right Skills, Wherever They Studied

Great candidates in and around Chichester come from all sorts of backgrounds. Some have degrees. Some have apprenticeships, professional qualifications, or a decade of hard-won experience instead. We don’t rank one above the other by default. We ask what the role genuinely needs, then go and find it.

Does the Criteria Still Fit the Role?

We regularly ask clients a slightly cheeky question. Did this role ever really need a degree, or did it just always ask for one? Most of the time, the honest answer surprises them. We help rewrite criteria around outcomes and capability, not inherited assumptions.

Do They Have the Skills That Actually Matter?

This is the whole point of skills-based hiring, so we don’t skip it. We test for it properly. Every candidate we put forward has been assessed on the skills the job genuinely requires, not just interviewed about them.

Why Chichester Businesses Trust Us to Get This Right

For permanent roles in professional services across Chichester, that’s exactly why local employers keep coming back to us. We’re not chasing a trend for the sake of a LinkedIn post. We’re building shortlists that actually reflect what skills-based hiring is supposed to deliver.

Talk to Chichester’s Recruitment Experts

The degree requirement is dying. Whether your process is actually ready for what comes next is a different question entirely.

Talk to Chichester Recruitment, and let’s make sure your next hire is judged on skill, not just a certificate.