Hiring skilled labor remains difficult, even as the broader labor market has cooled. Employers need people with specific capabilities, and those capabilities are changing faster than traditional hiring can keep up.
The World Economic Forum found that 63% of employers see skills gaps as a barrier to business transformation while employers also expect 39% of workers’ core skills to change by 2030. We’re seeing that organizations that depend mainly on external hiring may struggle to find exact matches for roles that continue to evolve.
As we kick off the next CWS Summit in Dallas to talk about all things talent, employers are responding by widening their candidate pools and paying attention to the factors that influence whether employees stay.
Expand the Talent Pool
Right now, we’re noticing pushback to a particular trend. Companies are finding that while a long list of hiring requirements can feel like a safeguard, they can also screen out people who could otherwise do the work.
Degree requirements, exact job-title matches, and narrow career histories all reduce the number of candidates considered for a position. That may be reasonable when a role requires specialized expertise, but we find that it’s constricting for most positions when we’re helping our clients find candidates.
Skills-based hiring, which I’ve covered in a separate post, gives employers a more effective way to assess fit. The approach focuses on the capabilities needed to perform the work rather than using education or titles.
SHRM reported that 73% of organizations used skills-based hiring in 2023, with 27% adopting the practice during the preceding year. Yet, more than 60% of employers still rejected otherwise qualified candidates because they lacked a college degree. That gap shows how quickly hiring language can change when we’re not focused on changing our screening practices.
Broadening the talent pool also means looking beyond candidates who already work in the same industry. A worker may not know a company’s specific environment on day one, but they may bring experience with similar processes and ways of thinking. We also see that companies can generally trust their own training to close any skills gaps.
Build Skills From Within
External recruitment solves an immediate vacancy, which we know well as a staffing partner. We also know that internal development can be effective, too.
Current employees already know the organization’s systems. With targeted development, they may be able to move into new roles faster than an external candidate who has relevant technical experience but no organizational context. Keeping an employee also keeps their knowledge within the company.
An employee may use abilities in a current role that could transfer to another department, or they may have prior experience that the organization has never documented. Conversations and project work can help show where those candidates are in your business.
A 2025 SHL study based on responses from more than 400 HR, development, and talent professionals found that 64% believed talent mobility had a significant positive effect on business outcomes and retention, though only 37% said their organizations were investing in upskilling and reskilling to address talent shortages.
A mobility program will stall if managers are rewarded for holding on to strong employees rather than helping them grow elsewhere in the organization.
Give People a Reason to Stay
A larger pipeline offers limited value if turnover continues to drain talent from the organization.
Compensation matters, especially when pay falls below market expectations. Still, employees make decisions about staying based on a wider set of experiences. Workload, manager relationships, recognition, scheduling, career progress, and trust all shape how someone views their future with an employer.
Those results give employers several areas to examine. Do employees receive useful feedback? Can they see a future with the organization?
Managers have considerable influence over those experiences. Gallup’s research has attributed 70% of the variance in team engagement to managers. That makes manager selection and support part of the talent strategy.
Retention problems often surface first in everyday interactions. Employees may feel overlooked for opportunities or unsupported when work becomes difficult. Regular career conversations and stay interviews can reveal those issues before an exit interview documents them too late.
Where Employers Can Start
As we prepare to attend this year's CWS Summit, we're seeing many of these same workforce challenges shape conversations across industries. Employers continue to look for new ways to access talent and improve retention in a constantly changing labor market with new technical pressures. We look forward to hearing how organizations are approaching these challenges and sharing perspectives from our own experience as a staffing and workforce partner.
Looking for talent right now? Check out CTG’s talent services and where we specialize.
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