Do UK Employers still value the importance of qualifications?

New research has revealed that 65% of UK employers now consider educational qualifications less important when hiring.

A study by a hiring platform found that only 14% of UK job postings on its site mention any educational qualifications.

It seems UK employers are more likely to assume qualifications were met rather than explicitly state them in job postings.

Researchers claim there was also growing evidence that highly technical occupations were increasingly embracing skills-based hiring.

Although 61% of UK employers still considered university degrees during candidate screening, only 5% of job postings explicitly required one.

However, some, more highly regulated professions, were seeing an increase in educational requirements. Postings in dental occupations, #engineering, #tech, veterinary science, and scientific research have all seen a rise in degree requirements over the past six years.

Whether education requirements are implied or not, with a candidate shortage remaining tight in certain sectors of the #UK economy, a move to skills-first hiring may be a wise move for employers needing to extend candidate pools.

People considering the next steps in their #education should be reassured that while educational #qualifications are important in some industries, there are many roles that take into account a range of skills and experience alongside education to measure suitability for a job.

Whether education requirements are implied or not, with labour supply remaining tight in certain sectors of the UK economy, a move to skills-first hiring may be a wise move for employers needing to extend candidate pools.

In the meantime, some of the world’s leading employers are forging ahead with new suggestions and recommend the following.”

These include:

• scrapping GCSEs and A levels and replacing them with a new qualification at age 18 that would include multiple forms of continuous assessment
• establishing an expert commission to reform the national curriculum and base it on minimum proficiencies for numeracy, literacy, science and, with time, digital skills
• introducing a statutory requirement for all schools, including academies, to follow the core of a newly reformed national curriculum (numeracy, literacy, science and digital skills).

Meanwhile, data from the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education suggests that more needs to be done to improve the outcome of T levels in digital subjects. Only 25.9% of students who undertook a digital course achieved higher grades and 10% did not complete the full course.

Whats your thoughts?
Is the person spec more important than the qualifications on paper?