Employers are scaling back or even eliminating the need for employees and potential employees to have college degrees. Their reasoning for this? Employers now prefer to hear and see a candidate's skills and competencies. A Harvard Business Review study found "degree inflation" made the job market inefficient, because degree inflation demanded college degrees to work jobs that didn't need them.

The trend after COVID-19 is moving sourcing practices in a more lenient direction. Major employers like IBM, Bank of America, and Github have relaxed their hiring practices. These changes may stem from having a smaller pool of active candidates to hire from and strict job requirements have put companies at a major disadvantage during the Great Resignation. Employers must find the right candidates AND scale back their job requirements. But how? Well, the solution lies in starting the hiring process with a skills-based job description.

Small talk is a core component of our everyday interactions, it’s a convenient ice-breaker we can use to start a deeper conversation. Even in formal occasions, such as job interviews, starting out with small talk is acceptable and common, but that should be the only moment of the interview you’re asking questions whose answers, you already know, will be generic, per-packaged, and, very likely, not true!

Considering how precious the job interview time is, you should only ask questions you really care about and those answers can effectively help you select the right candidate(s).