What is the Skills-Based Hiring Assessment?
Many class specifications carry requirements that were written years ago: a bachelor's degree here, five years of experience there, a certification that made sense for the role in 2005. Each one narrows your candidate pool, and it's rarely clear which ones still earn their place. The Skills-Based Hiring Assessment reads the full text of a spec, extracts every stated requirement, and evaluates whether each is truly essential for job performance or is acting as a proxy for skills that could be demonstrated another way.
Beyond flagging requirements for review, Holly generates suggested replacement language that reframes credentials around demonstrated competency. That gives you a concrete starting point for rewriting job postings or updating the spec without starting from scratch.
Common Use Cases
Modernizing Outdated Class Specifications
Specs that haven't been updated in years often carry legacy credential requirements that no longer reflect how the work is done. The assessment helps you identify which requirements are worth keeping and which can be rewritten around current competencies.
Supporting Skills-Based Hiring Initiatives
Before posting a position, the assessment gives you a clear picture of what you're actually asking candidates to demonstrate, and whether the current language will attract the right pool. Combined with Holly's Generate Interview Questions analysis, you can move from a revised spec to a structured interview guide quickly.
Comparing Skills Across Classifications
Because the analysis extracts the underlying competencies of a role, it also supports classification work. Understanding what a job requires, independent of its title or historical credential norms, helps you compare positions more accurately, build defensible job series, and explain compensation relationships between roles.
Running This Analysis
The Skills-Based Hiring Assessment runs on one spec at a time, from the spec's Analyze menu. For the steps, see How to Run an Analysis on a Class Specification.
Note: Your agency's configuration determines which analyses are included for your account, so this analysis may not be available to you. Questions about your configuration? Contact Holly Support at [email protected].
Understanding Your Results
The results walk through four steps, each building on the last. Here's what each covers and how to read it.
Step 1: Requirement Identification
Holly extracts every traditional requirement stated in the spec: education requirements, experience requirements, certifications and licenses, and technical skills or tool proficiencies. Each type is evaluated differently:
Education requirements (e.g., degree minimums): Flagged when a degree functions as a proxy for knowledge or skills that could be demonstrated through experience.
Experience requirements (e.g., years of prior work): Evaluated for whether the threshold reflects specific skill outcomes or simply time served.
Certifications and licenses: Holly distinguishes between credentials legally required for the role, such as a state license for a regulated function, and preferred qualifications that could be replaced with direct skills assessment.
Technical skills and tool proficiencies: Overly tool-specific requirements (e.g., "Advanced Microsoft Excel required") are evaluated for whether they reflect the underlying competency, such as data analysis, rather than a specific product.
Step 2: Necessity Assessment
Each requirement is assigned one of four necessity levels. This is the fastest place to spot what needs attention: anything rated Unnecessary is a candidate for removal or rewriting.
Critical: Absolutely essential for job performance or required by law or regulation. No reasonable alternative exists.
Important: Significantly contributes to job performance, but alternatives may exist.
Beneficial: Helpful for the role but can be developed on the job or substituted with related skills.
Unnecessary: Creates a barrier to entry without a clear, demonstrable link to job performance.
Step 3: Barrier-to-Entry Analysis
Holly flags requirements that may screen out candidates who can do the job but lack the specific credential. For each flag, the analysis evaluates whether the requirement is directly linked to a job function or legal obligation, whether it's shorthand for skills that could be assessed directly, and whether its language limits the candidate pool without improving job fit.
Step 4: Alternative Qualification Assessment
For each requirement, Holly rates how much flexibility exists in how a candidate could demonstrate the underlying competency:
Not Applicable: No reasonable alternative exists, such as a legally mandated license. The requirement stands as-is.
Limited Alternatives: Specialized knowledge is difficult to obtain outside traditional pathways, but alternatives are possible with rigorous assessment.
Multiple Alternatives: The skill is commonly developed through varied pathways. Portfolios, work samples, or skills assessments could substitute.
Fully Flexible: The competency can be assessed directly during the hiring process. Traditional credentials create unnecessary barriers.
Requirements rated both Unnecessary and Fully Flexible are your highest-priority rewrites: they narrow your candidate pool the most while being the easiest to replace with a direct skills assessment.