Many organizations are shifting from tradition- al candidate assessments to using skills-first assessments 6,7 to match individuals to roles based on skills and provide tailored develop-ment pathways. Skills-based assessments offer insights into an employee’s current skills, level of expertise and areas for growth. For this approach to be effective, it is essential to understand not only the skills each candidate or employee possesses but also the depth of their expertise. Key characteristics for design-ing and deploying such skills-based assess-ments are: –Role specific: Ensure assessments are tied to day-to-day tasks. –Equity oriented: Design should be in- clusive and catered to the needs of all test-takers. –Cognitively demanding: Develop challen- ging questions that accurately measure candidates’ skills. Adopting skills-based assessments involves leveraging a skills taxonomy to identify the critical skills for each role. Engaging hiring managers and team leaders to identify essen-tial competencies and skills further ensures that assessments align with actual role re-quirements. The following are examples of as-sessment methods that have arose from our consultations with experts, policy-makers and business leaders: –Self-ratings and peer reviews: Empl oyees can self-assess their skills, with supple- mentary feedback from managers or co l- leagues when appropriate. This dual pers- pective provides a comprehensive view of how individuals apply their skills on the job, accounting for potential biases in self-as- sessment. Insights from this method are commonly used to design tailore d training, support career development and fac ilitate organization-wide skills mapping. –Technical tests: Standardized t echnical tests, such as coding challenges or pro- blem-solving exercises, measure p roficien- cy in specific skills, allowing for consistent comparisons across candidates in r ecruit- ment processes. –Work samples and simulations: Real istic job simulations or work samples e nable prospective candidates to showca serole-specific skills in practical scenarios, offering valuable insights into their likely performance on the job. –Behavioural assessments: Tools such aspersonality tests, situational judgment testsand structured interviews evaluate softskills like teamwork, communication andleadership in candidates. While skills-based assessments can enhance hiring accuracy and fairness, organizations must design them thoughtfully to address po-tential limitations: –Bias mitigation: Poorly designed assess-ments can still harbour bias. For instance,self-rating methods may reflect cultural orgender biases in self-per ception.8, 9 –Balancing test performance with othermetrics: Avoid over-r elying on any single assessment method; a balanced approachcan provide a more holistic view of candi-dates’ abilities. –Ensuring accessibility: Online assessmentsshould be accessible to all candidates, in-cluding those with limited digital access. –Data quality in AI: When using AI-drivenassessments, ensure the underlying data r eflects diverse groups to prevent uninten- tional bias based on gender, ethnicity or language differences. Incorporating skills-based assessments ef-fectively requires an inclusive, balanced ap-proach, ensuring that assessment methods align with organizational goals and promote equitable opportunities for all candidates. By using innovative skills assessment methods, like game-based assessments, we’ve identified talent that might otherwise be overlooked if evaluated solely on de-grees or work experience. This approach has helped diversify our talent pools and improve retention rates. RandstadKey insight 3: How to adopt skills-based assessments Global Skills Taxonomy Adoption Toolkit 18

Global Skills Taxonomy Adoption Toolkit 2025