Skills-based hiring takes root as focus shifts from fancy degrees

“College – does not matter. Resume -not needed,” read the hiring post on X last month when Sudarshan Kamath, founder of artificial intelligence startup Smallest.ai, announced that the company was on the lookout for a full-stack engineer, offering a salary of ₹40 lakh per annum. The Bengaluru-based startup unsurprisingly found itself swamped with applications – more than 7,000 at last count. But significantly, it wasn’t just a move to grab eyeballs.