Most CIOs agree that skills-first hiring makes sense. The challenge lies in translating this consensus into a functional model. In a recent CIO opinion piece, Per Scholas President Caitlyn Brazill argues that AI is accelerating the gap between intention and execution, giving organizations new ways to get hiring wrong faster.
Hiring Practice as a Structural Issue
Progress on removing degree requirements from job postings has stalled. Data from Indeed shows that by November 2025, the share of postings requiring a college degree had nearly returned to 2019 levels, erasing five years of gains. Meanwhile, a University of Phoenix survey found that 69% of hiring decision-makers believe there is still too much focus on degrees, with little clarity on what to evaluate instead.
This gap is a structural failure rather than a philosophical one. Job descriptions default to historical templates. AI screening tools learn from existing hiring data, which means existing bias gets automated rather than eliminated. And one in four non-HR managers receives no training before interviewing technologists, even when the final hiring decision is theirs. When skills-first initiatives are layered on top of these systems unchanged, the strategy collapses under the weight of individual discretion.
What Successful CIOs Are Doing Differently
The CIOs closing the gap share three practices. First, they get specific. They define exactly which skills matter for each role and validate those definitions against the performance of current high performers, including demonstrated experience with AI tools, agentic workflows, and cross-platform problem-solving.
Second, they align IT and HR around shared metrics. First-year retention, promotion velocity, and 90-day performance reviews sit alongside traditional recruiting metrics. This gives both functions a common definition of what a successful hire looks like.
Third, they build relationships with employer-aligned training pipelines before a role opens. Bank of America invested nearly $40 million in workforce development in 2025 alone and partnered with more than 600 nonprofits across the US. TEKsystems worked with Sentara Healthcare to fill open big data positions through a skills-based cohort model, achieving 80% retention one year post-training.
At Per Scholas, our head of IT, Tyrone Washington, puts it directly: technical skills might get someone through the door, but it's "smart skills" including discernment, emotional intelligence, complex problem-solving, and agility that build a career in an AI-driven environment. That framing shapes how we train and what our employer partners receive on day one.
The ROI Case Is Already There
Skills-first hiring, when paired with structured onboarding and development pathways, is a retention strategy as much as a talent acquisition strategy. The fully loaded cost of replacing a technical employee is between 1 and 2 times their annual salary. In one employer partnership deploying skills-trained talent, a TEKsystems client finished the first year $238,000 ahead after accounting for program costs, with a projected annual return of over $1.2 million.
Every quarter a technical role sits open has a measurable impact on project delivery and team capacity. CIOs are uniquely positioned to surface those costs, and to make the case for building the systems that fix them.
Read the full CIO piece to see how Brazill breaks down the execution failures and what technology leaders can do this year to move from principle to practice.