Last updated: October 2026
Most talent acquisition leaders have heard the case for skills-based hiring. Fewer have seen hard numbers on whether skills-based hires are successful. We pulled our 2025 placement data to find out, and the results make a strong case for hiring based on a candidate's skills rather than their degree or experience.
<h2>77.5% of CareerCircle Candidates Successfully Completed Their Assignments in 2025</h2>
Across our six core disciplines (telecom technician, help desk, data entry, project manager, customer service representative, and desktop support), CareerCircle candidates had an average retention rate of 77.5% in 2025. We define retention as successfully completing a contract assignment with an Allegis Group operating company, meaning the candidate either finished the full assignment or converted to a permanent employee at the end of it.&nbsp;
That retention rate is 11 percentage points higher than industry average for the same roles, which suggests that candidates hired for verified skills are more likely to stay and succeed in these roles.
<h2>Who CareerCircle Candidates Are</h2>
The CareerCircle talent network includes more than 225,000 candidates and 200 community partner organizations who bring in talent. One in six members self-ID as part of the military community and one in seven self- ID as an individual with a disability, and many hold credentials from programs like Grow with Google, IBM SkillsBuild, Microsoft, and Salesforce. Our members average five to seven years of work experience and are skilled professionals who often get filtered out by degree requirements and keyword screens before anyone sees what they can do.
<h2>Skills-Based Hiring Delivers Retention Beyond Our Network</h2>
Independent research points in the same direction. A 2024 study from the <a href="https://www.burningglassinstitute.org/s/Skills-Based-Hiring-02122024-vF-srmp.pdf" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Burning Glass Institute and Harvard Business School</a> looked at workers without degrees who were hired into roles that used to require one, and found their two-year retention rate was 10 percentage points higher than that of their degreed coworkers. For teams fighting turnover in roles like help desk and customer service, skills-based hiring might be the solution you need.
Want to see what skills-based hiring could do for your candidate quality? Talk to our team about building your skills-first talent pipeline.
<a href="https://go.careercircle.com/talent-solutions-request-a-demo-today" style="text-decoration: none; display: inline-block; padding: 10px 20px; background-color: #1010fc; color: white; border-radius: 5px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">Request a demo today</a>

CareerCircle candidates had a 77.5% retention rate across core roles. See what our data shows about skills-based hiring and retention.

What CareerCircle's Data Shows About Skills-Based Hiring

Do skills-based hires stay? CareerCircle’s 2025 placement data shows a 77.5% retention rate across six core disciplines, including help desk, desktop support, and customer service. That rate outperforms Allegis Group operating companies in the same roles. Learn who CareerCircle candidates are, how we measure retention, and what independent research from the Burning Glass Institute and Harvard Business School shows about skills-based hiring.

What CareerCircle's 2025 Data Shows About Skills-Based Hiring and Retention

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Veteran Hiring

Partnerships with community-based organizations are one of the most reliable ways to reach inclusive talent. Building and maintaining them one organization at a time is what makes the strategy so hard to sustain.
Many of the talent acquisition leaders we have worked with have tried to build a hiring pipeline through community organizations, and they often tell us the early results were encouraging, but then their program stalled. Maybe the person at the nonprofit who managed the relationship left, or the reporting was never easy to understand, or expanding into three new markets meant starting the whole process over from scratch. Whatever the reason, the story tends to be similar: The community partner sourcing strategy is not the problem, but the time and energy required to build and run these programs is.
<h2>Why Do Community Partnerships Benefit Hiring Teams?</h2>
Community organizations, workforce development boards, community colleges, and job corps programs build engaged, trusted communities around the people they serve, something a job board alone cannot replicate. It is often easier for companies to connect with these candidates because of the relationship already established with their organization.
A candidate might not look perfect on paper, whether it's from a career gap, a nontraditional credential, or a resume that does not map neatly to the job description, but the training, credentials, and support they gained through their partner organization tell a fuller story, and CareerCircle&rsquo;s recruiters help translate that story for hiring teams. Taken all together, this gives hiring managers a reason to move someone forward rather than accidentally screen a qualified candidate out.
Hiring this way also changes who ends up in your pipeline. Each partner organization serves a specific population, whether that is transitioning service members, individuals with disabilities, or graduates of a college program, so sourcing from them is a practical way to build a skilled workforce that reflects the communities where you operate.
What&rsquo;s the Cost of Managing Separate Community Partner Relationships?
This is where the multi-partnership model breaks down. Every individual partnership carries its own overhead, which often does not scale well.
<ul>
<li>
A separate agreement for every organization. One MOU, one legal review, and one procurement cycle per partner, repeated across every market you hire in.
</li>
<li>
A separate point of contact for every organization. Nonprofit teams are small and turnover is real. When your contact moves on, the relationship often resets. Even if your contacts remain at their orgs for a while, all the individual relationships take a lot of time to manage.
</li>
<li>
A separate reporting format for every organization. Some send spreadsheets, some send email updates, and some send nothing at all, which leaves your team stitching together outreach documentation by hand.
</li>
<li>
A geographic ceiling on every organization. Some community partners organizations are decentralized, so hiring in twelve markets might mean twelve versions of the same conversation.
</li>
<li>
No shared view of what is working. Without centralized data, it might be hard to tell which partnerships are producing hires.
</li>
</ul>
<h2>What Changes With One Contract and 200+ Partners?</h2>
CareerCircle holds active relationships with more than 200 nonprofits, workforce development boards, community colleges, and training organizations across the country. We manage every part of those partnerships: the agreements, the candidate onboarding, the transfer of organization trust, the reporting, etc. And the organizations stay invested because we give their members exceptional support, which in turn keeps skilled candidates flowing into our platform, and into our client&rsquo;s pipelines
<img width="519" height="199" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/WpzjHQKxQue9ekKEMm9a">
For employers, this means our network becomes your talent pool. Your team signs once and gains access to candidates from all 200+ organizations, either by sourcing directly on our platform or by having our recruiters do it for you.
This structure solves the problems that end most community-based sourcing programs. Your team no longer spends hours maintaining each relationship, because we handle that work across the entire network, whether you're hiring in one market or twelve. And turnover stops threatening your pipeline. When a contact at a partner organization moves on, or when the person on your team who managed those relationships leaves, nothing resets, because the relationships live with CareerCircle, not in one person's inbox.
What your recruiters see is a talent community of read-to-work members, 65% of whom hold a certificate or certification, with five to seven years of professional experience on average. Roughly 1 in 7 members is an individual with a disability and 1 in 6 is part of the military community, which means your veteran hiring and Section 503 outreach run through the same channel as the rest of your sourcing, not a separate program your team has to staff. Plus, the quality of our skilled talent is stronger than industry average, meaning the members we place show a 9% higher retention rate than industry benchmarks.
<h3>The Kinds of Partners in Our Network</h3>
Our partners include national nonprofits serving the military community, organizations supporting individuals with disabilities, community colleges, workforce development boards, job corps programs, and learning providers. Some run technical certificate programs, some provide career readiness and wraparound support, and many do both. What they share is a pipeline of skilled members and a stake in seeing them hired.
<img width="1437" height="754" src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/dCisWeuGQx2eJFic6gF6">
<h3>How CareerCircle Helps Hiring Teams</h3>
Post your jobs on our platform. Sign one contract and unlock access to candidates from 200+ workforce development organizations, nonprofits, and upskilling providers in one place.
Reach skilled, job-ready candidates through virtual career fairs. Source candidates through virtual career fairs that put your employer brand front and center. We handle all the outreach, marketing, and branding work, so your team can focus on hiring.
Track, hire, and optimize. Candidates apply directly into your existing ATS, with no new workflow to manage. Our detailed reporting gives you visibility into pipeline performance, from job views to apply clicks.
<h2>Why Consolidation Matters for Federal Contractors?</h2>
If you are a federal contractor, the fragmented model creates a documentation problem on top of a sourcing problem. Demonstrating consistent good-faith outreach under Section 503 and VEVRAA means producing evidence of ongoing activity, not a scramble the week an audit notice arrives.
Because outreach runs through one platform, every touchpoint is tracked in one place: job views, apply clicks, view-to-apply ratios, UTM tracking, and sourcing activity. We host your roles on a WCAG 2.2 Level AA platform, and upon request, we provide Letters of Good Standing that detail partnership tenure and outreach activity, document virtual career fair engagement, and offer InclusiveU, our SHRM-accredited training on inclusive hiring for teams. The reporting your compliance team needs is all centralized.
<h2>Your Next Hire Is Already in Our Network</h2>
Let's be clear about what we're saying here: if the partnerships you've built are working, keep them. Your team fought for those agreements, and they took time and maybe a full procurement cycle to get signed. Chances are that effort paid off, too. If you recognize a few of the logos above, that's a good sign you've been partnering with the right organizations all along.
What we bring is all the other partners and our member base. Our network adds skilled members across organizations you haven't signed yet, and we can take the maintenance work off your plate for the ones you have. We hold the agreements, run the onboarding, coordinate the day-to-day, and centralize the reporting. Your team gets the candidates and the results without the overhead.
<a href="https://go.careercircle.com/talent-solutions-request-a-demo-today" style="text-decoration: none; display: inline-block; padding: 10px 20px; background-color: #1010fc; color: white; border-radius: 5px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">Schedule a complimentary employer consultation</a>
<h2>Frequently Asked Questions</h2>
Does our team still need direct relationships with individual community partners? Not to reach their candidates. You are welcome to keep the relationships you value, but CareerCircle handles the agreements, onboarding, coordination, and reporting across 200+ organizations, so sourcing from that network no longer depends on your team managing each one.
How does the CareerCircle platform support OFCCP outreach documentation? Our platform tracks every touchpoint, including job views, apply clicks, view-to-apply ratios, and sourcing activity, and upon request, we provide Letters of Good Standing along with virtual career fair documentation and metrics on positive recruitment activity for veterans and individuals with disabilities.
Which training programs have candidates in the CareerCircle network completed? Members complete industry-aligned certificate programs through Grow with Google, IBM SkillsBuild, Microsoft, and Salesforce, and we have upskilled more than 10,000 individuals through our CareerReady program.
Can candidates from CareerCircle apply through our existing ATS? Yes. Candidates apply directly into your current system, so your recruiters keep their existing workflow and your reporting stays intact.

Community partnerships deliver skilled talent, but managing them one by one stalls programs. See how one CareerCircle contract unlocks 200+ partners.

How to Actually Manage Employer Community Partnerships

Community organizations are one of the most reliable sources of skilled, job-ready talent, but building and maintaining those partnerships one at a time drains TA teams and stalls programs. CareerCircle manages relationships with 200+ nonprofits, workforce development boards, community colleges, and training organizations, so your team can source from all of them through a single agreement, or have our recruiters source for you.

Community Partnerships Work. Managing Them One at a Time Doesn't.

Updated: October 2026
Explaining military experience to civilian employers is one of the hardest parts of transitioning out of service. Rank2Role, CareerCircle's new military service translator, turns your branch, rank, and occupation code into a civilian career summary you can use in interviews, then uses that summary to match you with live job openings. Watch Brad, our product owner, walk through how it works.
<iframe width="530" height="298" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HXYVBYvl7Tc?si=ev-RhV5X6CbNdhGR" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe> <a href="https://youtu.be/HXYVBYvl7Tc"></a>
<h2>0:10 &ndash; Introduction</h2>
Rank2Role does two things for you. First, it rewrites your service in civilian language, so you have a career summary ready when you sit down with an employer. Second, that summary powers your job matches.
<h2>0:47 &ndash; An Overview of the Input Fields</h2>
Rank2Role needs four fields to get started:
<ul>
<li>
Branch
</li>
<li>
Rank
</li>
<li>
MOS, rating, or AFSC
</li>
<li>
Years of service
</li>
</ul>
Enter your information into these fields and we'll be able to start showing you relevant jobs.
<h2>2:00 &ndash; Showing a Sample Search Using Rank2Role</h2>
To see Rank2Role in action, this part of the video runs a sample search for an 11B with six years of service.
<h2>2:40 &ndash; Explaining The Career Summary</h2>
Your career summary describes your service in terms of the work you did, like managing personnel, ensuring compliance, and responding to incidents. It's written by AI using CareerCircle's custom prompt, federal crosswalk data, and our own rank and duty mapping.
You can copy the summary to use anywhere or edit it to add or remove things. Rank2Role searches on whatever your summary says, so if you're aiming for a specific kind of work, add it to your summary and search again.
<h2>4:00 &ndash; Adding Duties, Skills, Certifications, and Education</h2>
You can add additional duties, certifications, education, and skills, then update your summary to include them. Because the summary drives the search, your matches update too and can open up roles beyond your primary MOS. For example, an 11B with an OSHA card and a year as a safety NCO could also match safety coordinator, training specialist, and operations lead roles.
<h2>4:50 &ndash; Looking at Real Jobs</h2>
If you want to see what a search looks like, this part of the video walks through a sample results page. You&rsquo;ll see live openings from our partner employers, matched to your career summary and set at the right level for your rank. Brad also covers the filters you can use to narrow results, including date posted, work setting, and search radius.
<h2>6:20 &ndash; How a Resume Enhances the Search</h2>
Each job card shows a skills match, highlighting which required skills you already have based on your resume and profile.&nbsp; Uploading a resume makes the jobs we show you more accurate
Log in or <a href="https://www.careercircle.com/join">join</a> to try Rank2Role today and put your skills to work.
<a href="https://www.careercircle.com/jobs/military-service-translator" style="text-decoration: none; display: inline-block; padding: 10px 20px; background-color: #1010fc; color: white; border-radius: 5px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">Explore Rank2Role</a>

In this video, we provide an Overview of Rank2Role: CareerCircle's Military Service Translator.

An Overview of Rank2Role: CareerCircle's Military Service Translator

In this video, we provide an overview of Rank2Role: CareerCircle's Military Service Translator.

What CareerCircle's 2025 Data Shows About Skills-Based Hiring and Retention

77.5% of CareerCircle Candidates Successfully Completed Their Assignments in 2025

Who CareerCircle Candidates Are

Skills-Based Hiring Delivers Retention Beyond Our Network

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