For emerging professions, such as jobs in the fi eld of artifi cial intelligence (AI) or  sustainability (green), labour supply does not meet industry demand. In this scenario of  labour shortages, our work aims to understand whether employers have started focusing  on individual skills rather than on formal qualifi cations in their recruiting. By analysing  a large time series dataset of around one million online job vacancies between 2019  and 2022 from the United Kingdom, and drawing on diverse literature on technological  change and labour market signalling, we provide evidence that employers have started  so-called ‘skill-based hiring’ for AI and green roles, as more fl exible hiring practices allow  them to increase the available talent pool. In our observation period the demand for AI  roles grew twice as much as average labour demand. At the same time, the mention of  university education for AI roles declined by 23 percent, while AI roles advertise fi ve times  as many skills as job postings on average. Our regression analysis also shows that university  degrees no longer show an educational premium for AI roles, while for green positions the  educational premium persists. In contrast, AI skills have a wage premium of 16 percent,  similar to having a PhD (17 percent). Our work recommends making use of alternative  skill building formats such as apprenticeships, on-the-job training, MOOCs (massive  open online courses), vocational education and training, micro-certifi cates and online  bootcamps to use human capital to its full potential and to tackle talent shortages.