Skills-Based Organisations and the Future of Talent Acquisition

This session looked at why organisations are moving from hiring for job titles to hiring for skills, and what that shift means for talent acquisition teams. James Marsh of HRreview was joined by Kate Beach, Global Head of Strategy Consulting at AMS, and Lewis Cohen, MD of Service Development at AMS.

Kate Beach, Global Head of Strategy Consulting, AMS; Lewis Cohen, MD of Service Development, AMS. Hosted by James Marsh, HRreview.

Key takeaways

Start with your critical skills and run a small pilot

Beach advised starting with skills that are critical to the business strategy, skills whose absence would hurt performance, and skills that are hard to hire. A pilot can be as small as one group of project managers, business analysts or engineers. In one client example, a global investment bank limited its first step to analyst and associate roles.

Break jobs down into skills to find hidden talent

Cohen explained that a capability such as sales negotiation is built from skills like active listening, commercial acumen and written and verbal communication. Project management rests on managing timelines, managing budgets and influencing without authority. Those skills often exist in people with no project management job title or qualification, inside the business and outside it.

Write roles in language outsiders can understand

Cohen described a bank that struggled to attract tech talent with job titles that only made sense inside the bank. AMS reviewed 220 tech role profiles, found four skills that underpinned all of them, and rebuilt the tech employer proposition and outreach around those four skills. The skills-led hiring events that followed averaged 50 qualified prospects each.

Redesign the process so people can move without a requisition

Beach said many processes and systems cannot move a candidate forward unless a job requisition exists, and that has to change. Cohen described a three-stage approach (pipelining, interview, ready to hire) that kept hiring compliant while recruiting for skills. Beach added that assessment should identify skills a person can develop, not only screen people out.

Fix your talent data before you build a skills view

Beach said most in-house TA teams AMS works with describe their data as patchy in some regions, often because of several different applicant tracking systems and inconsistent processes. Getting clean, global hiring data and reliable HRIS data comes first. Only then can you see what skills you have and what the business needs.

Do not go skills-first for every role

Cohen used the example of landing a plane: there you want a qualified pilot with years of experience, not someone with transferable skills. Skills thinking still matters when growing the next generation of pilots. Beach also urged including contingent and gig workers, so the business can decide which skills to build, buy or borrow.

22 Oct 2026 · Lewis Cohen, AMS

220 job titles, just four key skills

A bank struggling to hire tech talent found its 220 confusing job titles came down to four skills, and rebuilt its hiring around them.

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