Skills Based Hiring: The way of providing jobs in India is changing rapidly. Now only degree, college name or good marks are no longer a guarantee of job, rather companies are giving more importance to the skills of the candidates. Due to this, 89 percent of the companies in India are adopting skill-based hiring on a large scale for entry level jobs. This information has been revealed in Coursera’s Micro Credentials Impact Report 2026. This report is based on information collected from more than 3500 student employers and representatives of higher education from 7 countries including India. According to the report, almost all the companies in India are recruiting on the basis of skills in some form or the other. This figure is more than the global average of 82 percent.
Skills more important for job than degree
According to the report, companies are now paying less attention during recruitment on the basis of college name, GPA or degree only than before. Instead, it is giving priority to candidates who have proven and job-ready skills. The report also revealed that 91 percent of Indian graduates who obtained micro credentials got a job in their field within 12 months of completing their studies. And 97 percent of individuals say that entry-level employees with micro credentials perform better in their first year.
What are micro-credentials?
Micro-credentials are short-term professional certificates or courses that are tailored to specific industry needs. Their objective is to provide the candidates with the practical skills required for the job.
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Companies trust on industry related certificates
The report shows that 95 percent of employers in India give more importance to such micro-credentials, which have been prepared in collaboration with the industry. At the same time, 81 percent of the companies say that such candidates progress faster in the recruitment process. Apart from this, at the global level this figure is 73 percent.
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Micro-credentials with student credit preferred
According to the report, students in India are increasingly choosing micro-credentials that come with the facility of formal academy credit. 73 percent of students want to pursue credit-bearing courses, while only 21 percent are interested in non-credit micro-credentials. However, the report also says that higher education institutes in India still face the challenge of implementing this system on a large scale. 71 percent of higher education institution representatives believe that external credit recognition systems help make micro-credentials a part of learning, but this figure is lower than the global average of 79 percent.
Pressure is increasing for institutes also
According to the report, representatives of 50 percent of India’s higher education institutions believe that if institutions do not include micro-credentials in their curriculum, they may have to suffer losses at the strategic level. This has been attributed to problems like low acceptance among employers and delay in updating the curriculum over time.
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