From corporate experiment to Michigan’s skills based mandate
Michigan’s 2022 executive directive on skills-based hiring, Executive Directive 2022-3 signed by Governor Gretchen Whitmer on June 16, 2022, moves a corporate experiment into public policy infrastructure. The order requires every state department to redesign the hiring process so that each job description, job posting, and interview process focuses on demonstrable skills rather than defaulting to a bachelor degree filter. For talent acquisition leaders watching this shift, the message is clear and will reshape how employers frame both job descriptions and hiring practices.
The directive instructs agencies to remove non essential degree requirements, modernize job descriptions, and strip out supplemental questions that do not directly assess the key skills needed for performance in a specific job. That means every applicant and every candidate must be evaluated on relevant skills, not on proxies that reinforce bias or maintain the paper ceiling for people without a traditional bachelor degree. For private sector hiring managers, this is a live policy test of a skill based hiring approach that many organisations reference in a pdf playbook but rarely embed in the day to day hiring process.
Michigan’s move also directs the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity to support employers that want to adopt similar skills based models in their own hiring practices. That support now includes templates for posting job opportunities, guidance on how to review an applicant résumé for hiring skills rather than pedigree, and examples of interview questions that map directly to skills needed in critical roles. In one early agency review conducted in late 2022, for example, the Department of Technology, Management & Budget reported that more than half of audited roles removed four-year degree requirements without any documented decline in performance ratings or time to hire over the following review period. As more candidates and applicants experience this model in public sector hiring, they will start to expect the same clarity in private sector job postings and in every job description they read online.
What Michigan’s rules reveal about effective skills-based hiring design
Michigan’s requirements expose a hard truth for many organisations that claim to use skills-based hiring but still rely on legacy filters. When a state government bans non essential degree screens and forces every job description to spell out the key skills needed, it removes the easy excuse that there is no time to redesign the hiring process. For talent acquisition leaders, this is a blueprint for how to align hiring practices, interview process design, and candidate review methods with a genuinely skill based hiring approach.
First, the focus on eliminating unrelated supplemental questions signals that every interview and every assessment must be tightly based on the role’s outcomes. If a question does not test relevant skills, it introduces noise, slows time to hire, and increases the risk of bias against qualified candidates who do not match a traditional applicant profile. This is where structured interview questions, work samples, and practical tests of hiring skills can replace vague cultural fit conversations that often disadvantage non traditional candidates and applicants. One Michigan hiring manager in a technology unit, for instance, reported in an internal 2023 feedback survey that replacing informal chats with a standard coding exercise cut interview rounds by roughly a third while raising the share of offers to candidates without a bachelor degree; this is anecdotal but illustrates how structured assessments can shift outcomes.
Second, modernised job descriptions and job postings must translate into clear, measurable criteria that hiring managers can use consistently when they review each candidate. That means specifying the skills needed, the level of proficiency required, and the evidence that will count in the interview process, whether it comes from formal education or from experience without a bachelor degree. For teams rethinking how to describe work ethic, problem solving, and critical thinking in a way recruiters actually notice, a simple checklist can help: define the outcome the role must deliver, list three to five core skills tied to that outcome, describe what effective performance looks like in plain language, and decide in advance which work samples, scenarios, or past projects will be used to verify those capabilities in applicants.
Enforcement, follow-through, and lessons for private sector talent acquisition
One of the sharpest critiques of skills-based hiring in large companies is the follow through gap between policy and practice. When a governor’s directive ties compliance to agency accountability, it creates enforcement mechanisms that many corporate talent acquisition teams lack, including audits of job descriptions, monitoring of interview questions, and periodic review of hiring data for bias. In Michigan, departments now report on the share of roles that have removed non essential degree requirements and track how many hires are made based on verified skills rather than formal credentials. For private employers, this should prompt a rethink of how to embed skills based standards into recruiter training, hiring manager enablement, and the everyday hiring process, while also planning for practical constraints such as legal review, union consultation, and the cost of retraining interviewers.
Operationally, private sector teams can mirror Michigan’s approach by running structured audits of every job posting and job description to identify unnecessary degree requirements, vague language, and missing references to key skills. They can then redesign the interview process so that each applicant faces the same core questions, each candidate is scored against the same relevant skills, and each hiring manager documents the reasons for selecting or rejecting qualified candidates in a way that can be read and reviewed later. One practical case study: a mid sized services organisation that adopted this model for customer support roles removed degree filters, introduced a short problem solving simulation, and saw a double digit increase in qualified applicants alongside a measurable rise in hires from underrepresented groups and a modest reduction in average time to hire. This type of disciplined hiring approach also strengthens DEI outcomes by reducing unstructured bias and opening roles to people previously blocked by the paper ceiling.
Finally, the directive’s emphasis on support from the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity hints at a broader ecosystem for skills-based hiring that private employers can plug into. Talent acquisition leaders can pair external guidance with internal playbooks on hiring skills for critical thinking and AI readiness, while also tightening risk controls around issues like job abandonment checks before hiring new employees. Over time, organisations that treat skills-based hiring as a measurable operating system rather than a branding slogan will gain an advantage in both hiring speed and long term talent quality, even as they navigate compliance reviews, bargaining obligations, and the upfront investment required to shift away from degree based screening.