Employers moving away from skills-based hiring to requiring degrees and even GPAs

For years, we’ve been told that the four-year degree was becoming a relic. In our industry, the “skills-based hiring” movement felt like progress. We started focusing on what people could actually do rather than where they went to school. We looked at portfolios, we ran coding challenges, and we told ourselves that as long as the output was good, the pedigree didn’t matter.

But if you’re leading a talent acquisition team at a company with over 1,000 employees right now, you know the reality on the ground has changed. We aren’t struggling to find candidates anymore; we’re struggling to find real people.

The top of our hiring funnels has become a minefield. We are being hit with a relentless wave of AI-generated resumes, “perfect” portfolios that were built by bots, and increasingly sophisticated attempts by foreign actors to slide into our systems. In this environment, the “skills-based” approach has a massive, gaping hole: it’s incredibly easy to fake.

This is why we’re seeing a major shift back to traditional markers like the degree, the major, and the GPA. It’s not because we’ve become conservative or old-fashioned overnight. It’s because, in a world where everything digital can be faked, the university system is one of the last reliable ways to verify that a candidate is a real person with a verified history.

The Problem with “Skills” in the Age of AI

We have to be honest with ourselves about how easy it is to game the system now. If a candidate needs to provide a coding sample, an AI can write it in five seconds. If they need to pass a personality or psychometric test, there’s a prompt for that. Even “live” technical interviews are being compromised by candidates using hidden screens or real-time AI tools to feed them the right answers.

For a large enterprise, this isn’t just a “bad hire” problem. It’s a security problem. When you’re hiring at scale, you can’t afford to spend hundreds of hours manually auditing the digital footprint of every single “skills-based” applicant to see if they’re a bot or a proxy for a bad actor.

This is where the degree comes back into play as a critical filter. A university degree isn’t just an education; it’s a four-year “Proof of Personhood.” When a student has a 3.7 GPA from a known university, that’s a verified record that a specific human being was physically present in classrooms, sat for proctored exams, and interacted with faculty and peers over a long period.

A transcript isn’t just a list of grades. It’s a third-party verified history. In a sea of AI-generated noise, that “paper trail” is becoming our most valuable security protocol.

Why the Top of the Funnel is Breaking

If you’re managing hiring for a large organization, you’ve likely noticed that your Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is basically under a “denial of service” attack. Bots are now auto-applying to thousands of roles, perfectly tailoring every resume to hit your keywords. Your recruiters are drowning in 5,000 applications for a single role, and 90% of them are effectively “ghosts.”

This is exactly why focusing on early career talent through specialized sources like College Recruiter is becoming the smartest move for TA leaders.

When you use general job boards, you are opening the front door to the entire internet—including the bots and the bad actors. But when you target students and recent graduates through sources that are specifically tied to the university ecosystem, you’re working within a “gated community.” These candidates are much harder to fake because they have a fresh “human footprint.” They have a university-issued email, they have relationships with career services, and they have a verified enrollment status.

The GPA as a Proxy for Reliability

We used to debate whether a GPA actually predicted job performance. But today, the GPA serves a different, more urgent purpose: it’s a measure of discipline and consistency that an AI cannot simulate.

An AI can write a brilliant essay or solve a complex math problem instantly. What an AI cannot do is attend classes for four years, manage a heavy workload, show up for group projects, and maintain a high standard of performance across dozens of different subjects.

When we look for a high GPA in a specific major, we are looking for a candidate who has proven they can operate within a complex system and meet standardized requirements. For a company with 1,000+ employees, that kind of reliability is a foundational requirement. We need to know that the person we’re onboarding is capable of the “grind” of corporate life, and a high GPA is a verified signal that they’ve already done it.

Protecting the House: The Security Aspect of Early Career Hiring

We need to talk more about the security risks of our current hiring practices. We’ve seen an uptick in foreign actors—ranging from industrial spies to hackers—applying for remote or hybrid roles at large Western companies. They use AI to create flawless personas. They pass the technical screens because they’re using “proxies” or AI tools. Once they’re hired and get their VPN credentials, they have access to your proprietary code, your client data, and your internal communications.

This is a nightmare scenario for any TA leader. And it’s why “who you are” has become just as important as “what you can do.”

By prioritizing early career hiring, we are tapping into a pipeline where the identity verification has already been done for us. A student graduating from a state school or a private university has been vetted by admissions, by financial aid, and by their professors. There is a “human chain of custody” there.

When you source through a platform like College Recruiter, you are looking at a pool of candidates who are exactly who they say they are. You aren’t just buying a sourcing tool; you’re buying a layer of defense. You’re ensuring that your recruiters are spending their time talking to real students and recent grads, not sophisticated AI bots designed to look like “perfect” candidates.

Moving Beyond the “Post-and-Pray” Model

The old way of “post-and-pray” on massive, general job boards is officially dead for large employers. It just creates too much noise and too much risk.

The most effective TA teams I’m seeing right now are moving their budgets away from the “open web” and toward “closed ecosystems.” They are focusing on campus recruiting and early career platforms because they want a controlled environment.

In these ecosystems, the “cost of entry” for a bot or a bad actor is too high. It’s hard to fake being a junior at a specific university with a 3.5 GPA and a recommendation from a department head. It’s much easier to fake being a “Senior Developer with 10 years of experience” on a general job site.

The New Standard for TA Leaders

If you’re running a large-scale hiring operation, it’s time to rethink the value of the degree and the GPA. We shouldn’t feel guilty about using these filters. We’re not being “elitist”—we’re being practical. We’re responding to a shift in the digital landscape that has made traditional “skills-based” markers unreliable.

Here is how we need to be thinking about our strategy moving forward:

1. Identity First, Skills Second: We have to verify that the candidate is a real person before we even look at their portfolio. This means prioritizing pipelines where the identity is already baked into the source, like university-linked platforms.
2. The Transcript is a Security Document: Start treating the official transcript as a non-negotiable part of the process for early career hires. It is one of the few pieces of data that is still incredibly difficult to forge.
3. Focus on the “Fresh” Footprint: Students and recent grads are the most “verifiable” demographic in the workforce. Their records are current, their location is often known, and their institutional ties are strong.
4. Narrow the Funnel Early: Instead of trying to manage 10,000 unverified applications, focus on 500 verified candidates from targeted early career sources. You’ll find better talent, and you’ll do it with significantly less risk.

A Return to Trust

At the end of the day, hiring is built on trust. For a few years there, we thought we could replace institutional trust (the degree) with digital proof (the portfolio). But AI has effectively broken that digital proof. It has made it so easy to look like an expert that the “experts” are now indistinguishable from the bots.

The return to degrees and GPAs is a return to a trust model that works. It’s a realization that four years of verified effort is a better signal than a single “perfect” coding test that might have been generated by a machine.

For those at large organizations, part of your job is to protect the company while finding the best people. By leaning back into the major, the GPA, and the specialized early career sources that verify these things, you’re doing both. You’re finding the real talent, and you’re keeping the ghosts out of the machine.

It’s time to stop apologizing for wanting a degree. In the age of AI, that degree is the best “Blue Checkmark” we have.