Understanding Hiring Criteria in a Skills-Driven Global Economy

A university degree still matters. But for a growing number of employers, it answers only the first question about a candidate.

The more consequential questions come next.

What can you actually do? How have you applied what you know? How do you work with other people? Can you communicate with clients, solve unfamiliar problems and make sound decisions without waiting for detailed instructions? Perhaps most importantly, can you continue learning when the knowledge and tools required by your profession inevitably change?

These questions are reshaping recruitment in the Philippines and abroad.

Employers are gradually moving beyond hiring models dominated by academic credentials, degree titles and grade point averages. In their place is a broader assessment of the applicant: technical competence, communication, critical thinking, professional experience, adaptability, initiative and evidence that a candidate can translate knowledge into performance.

For students and fresh graduates, this changes the meaning of career preparation. The degree remains the foundation. Increasingly, however, the experiences built around that degree determine how competitive a graduate becomes.

What Employers Really Look for When Hiring

When employers evaluate job applicants today, they are increasingly looking for evidence that a candidate possesses the skills required to perform the role, can communicate and collaborate effectively, has gained relevant practical experience and can adapt as industries and technologies change.

Recent hiring research supports this shift.

In the United States, the National Association of Colleges and Employers, or NACE, reported in its Job Outlook 2026 research that 70 percent of participating employers were using skills-based hiring, compared with 65 percent the previous year. NACE is an American professional association based in Pennsylvania that represents colleges, universities and employers involved in graduate recruitment and career development.

The change becomes more significant when compared with traditional hiring criteria. In 2019, 73 percent of employers surveyed by NACE screened candidates according to GPA. By 2026, that figure had fallen to 42 percent.

Employers have not stopped caring about education. They are becoming more interested in what candidates can demonstrate because of it.

Why Skills-Based Hiring Is Becoming More Important

Skills-based hiring refers to evaluating applicants according to the capabilities required to perform a role rather than relying primarily on educational credentials or previous job titles.

The distinction matters.

A qualification tells an employer what someone has studied. A demonstrated skill provides evidence of what that person may be capable of doing.

NACE’s Job Outlook 2026 survey found that skills-based assessment was particularly common during interviews, where 87 percent of employers using the approach applied it, and during applicant screening, where 65 percent did so.

There is another important finding. Among employers that did not screen applicants by GPA, 73 percent considered whether candidates had demonstrated proficiency in key career competencies when making hiring decisions. Even among organizations that continued to use GPA, 67 percent also considered demonstrated competencies.

The implication is not that academic performance has become irrelevant. Strong academic performance can still communicate discipline, subject knowledge and consistency. But it increasingly operates alongside other evidence.

Employers want to know whether knowledge survives contact with the real world.

What Skills Do Employers Look for in Fresh Graduates?

The answer is increasingly a combination of technical capability and human judgment.

Across industries, employers consistently value communication, critical thinking, teamwork, professionalism, adaptability, leadership and digital literacy. These skills matter because entry-level employees are rarely hired to perform isolated technical tasks. They are expected to participate in teams, communicate with supervisors and clients, solve problems and learn quickly.

This is especially relevant as companies become more technology-driven.

A graduate may understand financial modeling, data analytics, design software, hotel operations or digital marketing platforms. But technical competence alone is rarely enough. Employers also want to know whether that graduate can interpret information, explain decisions and collaborate effectively with others.

The strongest candidates are therefore increasingly those who combine specialist knowledge with transferable skills.

The Same Shift Is Happening Across Asia-Pacific

The movement toward skills-based hiring is not confined to the United States.

LinkedIn’s Economic Graph Research Institute examined hiring patterns across Asia-Pacific in its June 2025 APAC Market Report. The research covered Australia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines and Singapore.

The report found that the skills required for jobs changed by approximately 40 percent between 2016 and 2024, with that change expected to reach approximately 70 percent by 2030.

For the Philippines, the implications are substantial.

LinkedIn calculated that shifting from conventional job-title-based recruitment toward skills-based hiring could expand the potential talent pool available to Philippine employers by 6.9 times. The equivalent expansion was 11.4 times in India, 9.5 times in Indonesia and 7.7 times in Australia.

The finding illustrates an important evolution in recruitment. Employers may discover capable candidates who do not possess the conventional job title, educational path or employment history traditionally associated with a position.

This becomes increasingly relevant as new occupations emerge.

LinkedIn found that 10 percent of professionals hired in the Philippines were entering jobs with titles that did not exist in 2000. In Singapore, that proportion reached 30 percent.

Careers are changing faster than many traditional definitions of careers.

What Philippine Employers Are Looking for in Applicants

The Philippine employment landscape provides important context for students preparing to enter the workforce.

According to the Philippine Statistics Authority’s May 2026 Labor Force Survey, approximately 49.63 million Filipinos were employed. The country’s employment rate stood at 95.2 percent, while unemployment was 4.8 percent.

More revealing for graduates is where those jobs exist.

Services accounted for 61.8 percent of total Philippine employment in May 2026, substantially ahead of agriculture at 19.9 percent and industry at 18.3 percent.

The services economy encompasses many of the professional environments that attract university graduates, including business services, finance, hospitality, tourism, retail, marketing, technology and professional services.

There are also signs of movement in sectors closely connected with these careers. Between April and May 2026, accommodation and food service activities recorded an increase of approximately 266,000 employed persons, while construction gained approximately 147,000.

These figures do not mean that every graduate will find employment easily. They reveal something more useful. The Philippine economy increasingly depends on industries in which people must combine specialized knowledge with communication, service, management, digital capability and problem-solving.

Jobstreet by SEEK, one of the Philippines’ largest online employment marketplaces and part of Australia-headquartered SEEK, similarly identifies communication, technical capability, problem-solving, teamwork and collaboration among the skills Philippine employers commonly seek.

Its Philippine career research also points to growing demand for digital capabilities including data analytics, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and cloud computing.

Yet technology has not diminished the importance of human skills.

Communication, collaboration, leadership, critical thinking, adaptability, motivation and empathy continue to matter across occupations.

The strongest candidate is therefore increasingly neither the person with only technical expertise nor the person with only interpersonal ability. Employers need people capable of combining the two.

Do Employers Care More About Experience or Grades?

For fresh graduates, this is one of the most important questions in modern recruitment.

Grades still matter, particularly in competitive graduate programs and professions where academic rigor signals technical preparation. But recent employer research suggests that relevant experience often becomes more influential when candidates possess similar qualifications.

NACE’s Job Outlook 2026 research offers compelling evidence. When employers were asked which attributes most influenced their decision between two otherwise equally qualified candidates, internship experience with the hiring organization and internship experience within the employer’s industry emerged as the most influential factors.

Both ranked ahead of a GPA of 3.0 or higher.

General work experience, leadership positions and extracurricular involvement also ranked ahead of the GPA criterion.

The conclusion is not that students should stop caring about grades.

It is that grades become more powerful when accompanied by evidence of application.

Why Internships Matter So Much in Hiring

An internship gives employers something a transcript cannot provide.

It reveals how a candidate operates when the work has consequences.

A transcript can demonstrate academic performance. It cannot fully demonstrate how a student reacts when a client changes a brief two days before a presentation.

It cannot show whether an aspiring hotel manager remains composed when service fails during peak operations.

It cannot reveal whether a marketing graduate can defend a campaign recommendation when management questions the strategy.

It cannot prove that an architecture graduate can reconcile design ambition with budget, regulation, engineering requirements and client expectations.

These lessons emerge through application.

NACE’s 2026 Internship & Co-op research reinforces this principle. More than 90 percent of participating employers said skills were how they differentiated between otherwise comparable candidates. Skills critical to the position came first, followed by broader career-readiness capabilities and previous internship experience.

For students, this changes the meaning of internships.

An internship is not merely a graduation requirement. Done properly, it is an early professional credential.

This is why the structure of a university’s internship program deserves consideration when students evaluate their education. At Enderun Colleges, for example, bachelor’s degree students complete two industry internships, supported by the Office of Career Services and a network of more than 900 industry partners across 33 countries. The institution also integrates virtual work experiences before its required in-person internships, allowing students to encounter professional projects before entering a physical workplace.

For students comparing universities, understanding what to look for in a college internship program can therefore be almost as important as comparing curricula. The quality of the placement, the work students actually perform, the guidance they receive and the professional relationships they develop can determine whether an internship becomes a credential or merely a requirement.

Employers Want Proof, Not a List of Adjectives

Most résumés contain familiar language.

Excellent communicator. Team player. Creative thinker. Natural leader. Problem solver.

The problem is not that these qualities are undesirable. The problem is that almost anyone can claim them.

Modern recruitment increasingly rewards evidence.

Consider the difference between saying you possess leadership skills and explaining that you led a five-person team through a semester-long consulting project for an actual company.

Consider the difference between calling yourself an effective communicator and showing that you presented undergraduate research at an international conference.

Consider the difference between claiming entrepreneurial ability and demonstrating that you developed, priced, marketed and sold a product to paying customers.

Jobstreet Philippines specifically recommends that applicants provide concrete examples and quantify achievements where possible when demonstrating skills to potential employers.

The lesson is simple.

Do not merely tell an employer what you are good at.

Show what happened when you used that ability.

Does Networking Really Help Graduates Find Jobs?

Networking remains one of the most misunderstood aspects of career development.

Many students associate networking with asking influential people for employment. Effective professional networking is considerably more subtle.

It is the gradual development of professional trust.

A professor recommends a former student to a company because the student consistently produced good work. An internship supervisor remembers an intern who showed initiative. An alumnus introduces a graduate to a colleague because they had previously discussed the industry. A conference conversation becomes an internship interview months later.

None of these relationships guarantees employment.

They create visibility.

This matters because hiring remains a human decision even when technology mediates the recruitment process. Résumé screening systems can identify keywords and qualifications. AI can recommend candidates. But people still evaluate credibility, potential, judgment and fit.

Internships can play a particularly important role here because they place students inside professional networks before graduation. Enderun’s Office of Career Services, for example, describes its industry partnerships as serving not only placement but also career guidance, professional networking and recruitment opportunities.

For students, networking therefore begins much earlier than the first job search. Faculty members, internship supervisors, visiting professionals, competition judges, alumni and classmates can all become part of a professional network.

The important question is not simply how many people you know.

It is how many people have seen enough of your work to know what you can do.

What Skills Matter for International Careers?

For Filipino graduates seeking careers overseas, technical competence is only part of the equation.

International careers place additional demands on communication, cultural intelligence and adaptability.

A Filipino hospitality professional working in Singapore or Dubai may serve guests from dozens of nationalities while working alongside an equally diverse team. A business graduate working for a multinational company in Manila may report to regional executives in Singapore while collaborating with teams in Australia, India or Europe. A designer may work with international consultants, suppliers and clients without leaving the Philippines.

This means that international experience should not be understood simply as having travelled abroad.

Its professional value lies in learning how to operate effectively across differences.

Can you communicate clearly with someone whose assumptions differ from yours? Can you adjust your approach without compromising professional standards? Can you understand how culture affects negotiation, leadership, customer expectations and workplace behavior?

These capabilities become especially valuable in hospitality, international business, entrepreneurship, marketing and design because these fields depend heavily on relationships.

Universities are responding by creating opportunities for students to encounter different professional and academic environments before graduation. These can include international internships, exchange opportunities and global academic partnerships that expose students to different approaches to business, hospitality, design and professional practice.

The value lies less in the destination than in what the student learns from operating outside a familiar environment.

How AI Is Changing the Skills Employers Value

No discussion of hiring criteria in 2026 can avoid artificial intelligence.

The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, produced by the Geneva-based international organization using input from more than 1,000 employers representing over 14 million workers across 55 economies, estimates that 39 percent of workers’ existing skills will be transformed or become outdated between 2025 and 2030.

The report projects significant employment disruption. It estimates that structural labor-market transformation could create 170 million jobs while displacing 92 million by 2030, producing a net gain of 78 million roles globally.

But the central challenge is skills.

Sixty-three percent of employers surveyed by the World Economic Forum identified skills gaps as a major barrier to transforming their businesses.

AI, big data, cybersecurity and technological literacy are among the capabilities expected to increase rapidly in importance. Yet the same employers continue to value analytical thinking, creative thinking, resilience, flexibility, leadership and collaboration.

This is one of the most important findings for students.

The rise of AI does not make human capabilities less important.

It changes which human capabilities create value.

Knowing How to Use AI Is Different From Knowing How to Think

Students entering the workforce will increasingly be expected to use AI.

NACE’s 2026 Internship & Co-op research found that 66 percent of participating employers said their interns already use AI in their work.

This suggests that AI literacy is rapidly moving from an advantage toward an expected workplace capability.

But using AI is not equivalent to professional competence.

An AI system can generate a financial summary. A finance professional must determine whether the assumptions behind it make sense.

AI can generate advertising concepts. A marketer must understand whether those concepts fit the audience, brand and commercial objective.

AI can create architectural images. An architect remains responsible for whether a building functions, complies with regulation and responds intelligently to its environment.

AI can suggest a business strategy. An entrepreneur must decide whether customers will actually pay for it.

The valuable professional therefore becomes the person who knows when to use technology, when to question it and when human judgment must prevail.

What Employers Look for in Business Graduates

Business careers increasingly reward graduates who can move between analysis and communication.

Employers need professionals who understand finance, operations, marketing, technology and organizational behavior, but they also need people capable of seeing how these functions interact.

LinkedIn’s APAC research provides an interesting signal. In the Philippines, one of the common cross-functional internal career movements identified in 2024 was between information technology and engineering. Across other Asian economies, the research recorded movement between accounting and finance, engineering and operations, and business development and sales.

Modern organizations are becoming less rigid about functional boundaries.

For students considering business, technology, economics and related management disciplines, breadth can therefore become an advantage. Financial literacy, data interpretation, presentation ability, digital fluency and strategic thinking increasingly reinforce one another.

A graduate who understands one business function may be employable.

A graduate who understands how that function affects the rest of an organization may be considerably more valuable.

What Employers Look for in Hospitality and Culinary Graduates

Hospitality presents a different challenge.

Technology can automate reservations, payments, inventory and portions of customer service. But the industry’s most valuable experiences still depend heavily on people.

Employers therefore look for graduates who combine operational competence with composure, cultural awareness, communication and service judgment.

The Philippine labor market also demonstrates the economic significance of the sector. The PSA reported that accommodation and food service activities added approximately 266,000 employed persons between April and May 2026.

For students considering hospitality and culinary careers, international exposure can carry particular value because the industry is inherently multicultural. Academic collaborations can also expose students to standards developed beyond the domestic market. Enderun’s culinary programs, for example, are supported by its academic partnership with École Ducasse, connecting culinary training in Manila with an international educational framework.

A technically capable employee can execute a process.

A strong hospitality professional understands the person receiving the service.

What Employers Look for in Marketing and Multimedia Graduates

Few fields illustrate the changing relationship between technology and human creativity more clearly than marketing.

Modern marketers work with analytics platforms, social media systems, generative AI, customer data and increasingly automated advertising tools.

Yet the fundamental task remains human.

Understand an audience. Identify what matters to them. Communicate an idea in a way that changes perception or behavior.

Employers therefore increasingly need marketers who combine creative judgment with analytical capability.