Businesses prefer the school of life to any university, a new study suggests.

Six of 10 small business owners and managers in a study by Bibby Financial Services said they regard experience and vocational qualifications above any academic qualifications, largely because of the lack of suitable candidates.

Due to the country’s burgeoning skills crisis, Bibby found many smaller firms making job appointment decisions with very little to choose from.

Some 20% of small firms’ appointments were made after interviewing just one or two candidates, and more than 40% in another recent survey said they do not receive any applications for some of the vacancies they advertise.

“If the 1,000 businesses a day that are currently starting up are to succeed, these requirements need to be met and the emerging skills gap in our economy addressed,” said David Robertson, chief executive at Bibby.

Part of the problem, Robertson said, is that many owners and managers, themselves, lack the necessary skills to help them interview and recruit talented staff. Of the 5 million interviews small firms hold each year, 79% of the employers conducting them have had no interview training.

Robertson advised those responsible for recruitment within their firms to re-evaluate their own training requirements to ensure they have the skills they need to make the best recruiting decisions.

More than a third of small firms say they now find it difficult to recruit skilled staff, but some industries, such as manufacturing, have made gains on closing the skills gap with a rash of new training programmes, both in schools and on the job.

With only 28% of the UK’s workforce currently qualified to technician and intermediate levels, as a recent Labour Party study found, paltry in comparison to the 51% in France and the 65% in Germany, many business leaders have asked the government to refocus its efforts in promoting skills training.

“Politicians have so far failed to listen to small businesses when they call for flexible training,” said Norman Mackel, education and training chairman for the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB).

“A firm with five staff cannot release employees for lengthy periods so that they can attend long training courses at local colleges where much of the funding is directed. Courses need to be bite-sized and targeted at solving specific problems.”