May 7, 2022
Inside the Skills-First Hiring Shift and Why the Portfolio Beats the Diploma
A hiring manager at a mid-size software company told me she has not opened a resume’s education section in months. She reads the portfolio link first. If there is nothing to click, the resume goes in the second pile, degree or no degree. That habit, multiplied across thousands of hiring managers this year, is the real story behind the skills-first hiring movement finally showing up in actual behavior instead of just in press releases. Companies have said “we value skills over degrees” for a decade without changing much about who actually gets hired. In 2026, entry-level hiring pressure from automation
