BridgeWorks
A few years ago, "skills-based hiring" was mostly a press release category. Companies announced bold-sounding policies about valuing skills over degrees. The actual job postings often kept the four-year degree requirement in place.
Something has shifted in the past two years. Across our employer partner network, the gap between the rhetoric and the practice has narrowed considerably. Roughly half of the 154 partners we work with have dropped or substantially relaxed degree requirements for at least one job family in the past 24 months. That has changed how our participants enter the workforce, and it has changed what credentials we focus on awarding.
A big part of how this is working in practice is something called stackable credentials. The phrase sounds bureaucratic. The underlying idea is straightforward and worth understanding.
What "Stackable" Actually Means
A stackable credential is a credential designed so that earning it counts toward a longer or more advanced credential. Earn the first one, you have a meaningful qualification on its own. Earn the second one, the first one carries over and you are partway through. Earn the third, you have a substantial cumulative qualification.
Compare that to a traditional four-year degree. If you complete two years of college and stop, you have... two years of college. Most of the time, that does not translate into a credential employers recognize. The hours you put in have value to you, but they do not function as currency in the labor market.
A well-designed stackable pathway turns those same hours into discrete, recognized credentials at multiple stopping points. You can stop after the first stack and get a job. You can come back two years later and add the next stack while you are working. You are never starting from scratch.
What This Looks Like in Our Programs
A few examples from our actual offerings.
Healthcare track. A participant can earn a Certified Nursing Assistant credential in 12 weeks and start working at $19 to $22 an hour in long-term care. They can then return for a Medical Assistant program that builds on the CNA coursework, opening doors to clinic and hospital outpatient roles in the $24 to $30 an hour range. The MA credential, in turn, articulates into the regional community college's LPN bridge program, which is a year of additional coursework leading to LPN licensure and another wage step.
That same path, taken in a single push from zero to LPN, is more than two years of full-time study. As a stack, it can be done over five or six years while working — with the worker earning a real wage at each step and only paying for the next credential when they are ready.
IT track. Similar structure. A participant earns CompTIA A+ in our entry program and can take a helpdesk role. From there, they can stack Network+ for infrastructure roles, then Security+ for SOC roles. Each is recognized independently. Each builds on the previous one. Several of our employer partners pay for participants to add credentials while employed.
Construction trades. OSHA 10 plus a forklift operator certification opens warehouse and logistics roles. Stacking NCCER core curriculum on top of those expands eligibility into industrial construction. Adding a specific trade certification (electrical, HVAC, welding) opens the apprenticeship pipeline.
Why Employers Are Embracing This
The honest answer is a mix of practical and ethical motivations, and the practical ones are doing more of the work.
The talent pool problem. When you require a four-year degree for a role that does not actually need one, you cut yourself off from roughly two-thirds of the working-age adult population in the United States. In a tight labor market, that is a problem. Several large employers in our network have publicly described removing degree requirements as the single most effective tool they have found for expanding their candidate pool.
Skills validation has gotten better. Industry certifications now exist for most technical skills employers actually want. Those certifications are testable, time-stamped, and usually less than a few years old, which is more than can be said for the relevance of a degree completed a decade ago. For many entry and mid-level roles, a recent industry credential is a better signal than a four-year degree.
The internal mobility argument. Companies that have shifted toward skills-based hiring report significantly stronger internal promotion pipelines. A worker who entered as a CNA and stacked toward LPN is far more likely to stay with the same employer than someone hired into a dead-end role. Stackable credentials make internal career ladders visible and navigable.
What This Means for Job Seekers
A few practical implications.
Look at the credential, not just the role. When evaluating a training program, ask whether it produces a recognized industry credential and whether that credential stacks toward something larger. A program that produces a certificate of completion but no industry credential is doing less for your portability than one that ends with a named certification.
Map the stack before you start. Most well-designed credential pathways have a published map showing what stacks toward what. If your prospective program does not have one, ask. If they cannot produce it, that tells you something.
Talk to employers about their tuition support. A growing number of employers in our network reimburse continuing education for stackable credentials, especially when those credentials lead to roles the company already needs to fill. This benefit is often under-advertised. It is worth asking about during the hiring process or after a few months on the job.
What This Means for Employers
If you are an employer reading this and considering shifting toward skills-based hiring, a few recommendations from our experience.
Audit your existing job descriptions. A common starting move is identifying every role where a four-year degree is required and asking, honestly, whether the role itself requires what a four-year degree provides. In our partner network, the most common answer turns out to be "no." Removing the requirement is often the highest-leverage single change.
Define what you do require. "Skills-based hiring" without a clear specification of which skills you actually need is not actually skills-based hiring. The most successful partners we work with have built skill profiles for each role and recruit against those.
Partner with credential providers. Whether that is us, a regional community college, or an apprenticeship sponsor, having a relationship with the people producing credentialed workers gives you a more reliable pipeline than open-market posting alone. We are always glad to talk about how partnership might work.
The four-year degree is not going away as a credential. But its role as a default filter for entry-level work is being reconsidered, and the pieces of infrastructure that need to exist for an alternative system are slowly coming into place. We are glad to be part of building them.
