As 2025 draws to a close, the global labor market faces a puzzling imbalance. Despite having more unemployed people than open roles, organizations continue to struggle to fill critical positions. This disconnect signals a deeper structural issue — one that challenges how we define, find, and deploy talents.
Current occupational mismatch problem
According to recent data from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) highlights the scale of the challenge. Today, 32.7% of job openings cannot be filled by unemployed people whose most recent jobs were in the same occupational group. At the same time, 26.5% of unemployed people cannot find openings that match their own experience. The result is a persistent mismatch between available roles and available talent.
"We have more unemployed people than job openings, and while that is a helpful measure for us to understand and aggregate what is happening, it makes a key assumption, and that is that any unemployed person can fill a particular job opening that is out there," explains James Atkinson, SHRM's VP of Thought Leadership. "But of course, we all know that that is not necessarily the case."
This occupational mismatch creates a two-sided dilemma:
- Organizations face persistent talent shortages.
- Job seekers remain sidelined despite having relevant skills.
The root cause lies in how employers define "qualified." Traditional hiring still revolves around job titles, degrees, and experience, outdated markers in a market where roles evolve faster than education systems.
What failed in 2025
The current widely used talent recruitment process primarily relies on comparing a candidate's CV with the job description. Typically, to speed up this process, employers will quickly scan the candidate's profile against criteria such as education level and previous job title, or filter directly by keywords, using a traditional Applicant Tracking System (ATS) based on keyword comparison.
The problem is with the same job title, years of experience and education level, does the candidate have the skill set (context) that meets the job requirements or business needs? Obviously, if based only on keywords, this method can easily filter out candidates with transferable or related skills.
Atkinson said:
“Sometimes our job descriptions become our worst enemies. They filter out qualified talent before recruiters even see them.”
At the same time, half of all employees will need to reskill by 2025, according to the World Economic Forum. The result is a growing disconnect between what people can do and what systems recognize they can do.
Putting skills in the center of work
Leading organizations are addressing occupational mismatch by adopting talent intelligence platforms that enable skills-based hiring. This approach shifts the focus away from credentials and job titles and instead prioritizes the actual capabilities and competencies candidates bring to the table.
Companies that have adopted this skills-based approach are seeing results: 25% faster time-to-hire, a 45% increase in candidate diversity, and a 35% improvement in retention rates.
→ Learn more about how organizations evolve into a skills-based organization.
How TalentsForce solves the mismatch
TalentsForce moves beyond tracking applicants to become your single source of truth for workforce skills. From the start, the platform builds a comprehensive skills foundation using your talent database and job requirements as supply and demand indicators.
This skills-first foundation unlocks capabilities that traditional applicant tracking systems miss. Your team gains visibility into what skills exist across candidates and employees, what skills each position requires, and where gaps emerge between supply and demand. This enables deeper analytics and workforce forecasting, transforming how organizations approach talent decisions.
The impacts:
- Reduce time on external hiring by looking internally first, discovering employees whose skills match new opportunities
- Transform talent pools from static databases into strategic assets
- Decrease cost per hire as internal mobility increases
- Build sustainable pipelines through continuous skills mapping across the entire talent ecosystem
For growing companies, moving from credential-based to skills-based hiring means uncovering hidden talent, making faster decisions, and building teams based on real capabilities instead of outdated proxies.
