Hiring Requirements That Make Companies Miss Out On Top Talent

This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more. gettyEven as labor market conditions shift, many employers still struggle to find qualified candidates for open roles. When a job description includes a long list of rigid requirements, companies may narrow their applicant pools to the extent that strong candidates are screened out before they have a chance to demonstrate what they can do.

Reconsidering which hiring requirements are truly essential can give employers more flexibility without lowering expectations for performance or quality. Below, members of Forbes Business Council share hiring requirements companies can reexamine to broaden their talent pools while keeping standards high.

Companies should reconsider requiring the perfect résumé and instead hire for drive, discipline and willingness to learn. Skills can be taught and experience can be gained, but work ethic is much harder to teach. We have become too comfortable expecting success to come easily. Real growth still requires effort, persistence and people willing to work for it. – Janet Linly, Marge Carson Global

Stop letting a keyword scan decide who gets seen. I have watched capable people get rejected because their résumé did not mirror a job posting’s exact language, not because they lacked the skill. A client-facing role and a technical role need different strengths, and those live in personality and trainability rather than phrasing. Assess the person, not the software. – Moustafa Moussa, Aethelgards

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Reconsider requiring a linear career path. Some of my best hires had “messy” résumés, including different industries and unconventional routes. Traditional hiring sees stuff like that as a red flag, but I see adaptability. In my experience, that usually matters more than 10 years spent doing the same thing. – Asad Kausar, Dabaran Inc.

I would reconsider requiring experience in the exact same industry. Some of the strongest hires bring skills from a different field, along with curiosity, accountability and a willingness to learn. Keep the standard high for what someone can do, but be more open about where they learned to do it. Hire for ability, not just familiarity. – Heather Baker, AY Media Group

Companies should reconsider the assumption that top talent has to sit in the same office or even the same country. I’ve found that building extended, distributed teams often raises the talent bar rather than lowering it because the search is no longer limited to who’s available nearby. The requirement worth dropping isn’t a skill or a standard; it’s the zip code. At the end of the day, I want to hire the best person for the role. – Anand Tated, Pacific Group of Companies

Reconsider rigid years-of-experience requirements. I’ve found that time in a role does not always equal readiness for the next one. Hire for demonstrated competence, judgment, adaptability and results. The standard should remain high, but the path a candidate took to meet it can be flexible. – Kerry Shipman, The Ship Group Holdings

Companies should reconsider screening out candidates for gaps in employment, as it eliminates candidates who left to be a caregiver or for other personal reasons, including burnout (which is often seen in healthcare), and are now returning. Ask what the gap was and what they did during it. Reliability is better predicted with reference checks and a 90-day performance window than by an unbroken timeline. – Laurie Pankow, EdD, MADR, Signature Healthcare

Companies can drop the requirement that candidates have already done the exact same job in the same industry. What matters is attitude, aptitude and abilities. Abilities can be learned, but the same can’t be said for the other two. The standard should stay high, but it should focus on the ability to deliver, not a prescribed career path. – Kelly Ahuja, Versa

Reconsider how heavily you weigh the résumé. Some exceptional people are not great at selling themselves on paper. Unless a credential is truly required, I’d put more weight on references, how someone thinks and what they’ve actually accomplished than on whether their background follows a traditional path. – Jeremy Friese, MD, Humata Health

Stop using credentials as a shortcut for a role you never defined. Write the measurable outcome, the deliverables and the 90-day targets before you write the job post. Once the job is that clear, you screen for drive and capacity instead of pedigree. This will help you hire faster and keep people longer. – Jason Sisneros, Built To Exit

We stopped requiring extensive prior trade experience for entry-level field positions. Instead, we screen for reliability, coachability and physical readiness, then train the technical skills ourselves. It widened our applicant pool significantly without lowering quality because skill can be taught, but work ethic can’t. – Brad Strawbridge, Capital City Roofing LLC

Companies should reconsider requiring a college degree when demonstrated competency, relevant experience and a strong track record can establish a candidate’s qualifications. Skills-based hiring does not lower standards; instead, it broadens the pathway for meeting them. Employers can expand their talent pool by focusing on whether candidates can perform, solve problems and grow with the organization rather than simply on where they studied. – Shakeatha Davis, S Davis Law Group

Early on, I wanted sales hires who arrived with a network, and I paid a premium for it. Almost none of those introductions survived the switch because they were built to sell someone else’s product. The reps who worked out were the ones who could build a pipeline in our market from nothing. I stopped paying for a Rolodex. – Snehal Nimje, Outdoo AI

One hiring requirement companies can reconsider is the expectation that candidates must already have every technical skill or a specific number of years of experience. This does not mean lowering standards. Employers can instead assess a candidate’s attitude, willingness to learn and ability to adapt. Technical skills can often be developed through training, but without the right attitude and commitment to learn, even a highly qualified employee may struggle. – Njile Bwana, Reveurse Tanzania Company Limited

Stop requiring every capability to arrive on a résumé. We’ve implemented AI to help address staffing shortages, and I prefer developing less-experienced hires through rigorous training. Companies can reconsider minimum years of experience but must invest in the systems that make people effective. AI can support the work, but it does not lower the standard or remove accountability. – Shawn L. Davenport, Genwealth 360 Inc.

Reconsider the expectation that every hire must “hit the ground running.” That requirement often rewards familiarity with today’s tools and processes rather than the ability to grow with tomorrow’s challenges. Keep the performance bar high, but evaluate how quickly candidates learn, apply feedback, navigate unfamiliar problems and improve over time. In rapidly changing roles, learning velocity and judgment can be more valuable than perfect day-one fluency. – Ping Liu, Ativafit AI Inc.

I think level of education is very often overvalued. People may not have advanced degrees, but if they’ve shown initiative in getting relevant experience and demonstrated both aptitude for the job skills and ability to learn, they’ve got great hallmarks for being a quality teammate. – Tyler Jordan, Jordan Digital Marketing

I’d look much harder for natural curiosity than existing knowledge. I’ve written about this before because I believe it may be the single most important quality you can hire for. In a world where businesses, technology and roles are changing constantly, what someone already knows matters less than their instinct to ask questions and learn. Skills can be taught, but natural curiosity is much harder to teach. It’s what allows people to adapt when the job they were hired to do inevitably changes. – Michel Koopman, CxO Coaching

The requirement worth reconsidering is usually the shape of the job, not the résumé. Full-time, on-site and permanent positions screen out capable people far more than a missing degree does. If you split the role into fractional or project work, or consider opening it past commuting distance, the qualified pool widens sharply while your performance bar stays exactly where it is. – Abdelahhad Barbour, Ostia Sciences Inc.