Skills-based hiring: Focus on abilities, not degrees, says HIRE Initiative

More employers are making efforts to remove hiring barriers and retain workers by recognizing and valuing skills regardless of how they were acquired — whether through a formal academic degree, on the job, or through the employee’s own experience. Recognizing that trend, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recently hosted an online discussion emphasizing the benefits of skills-based hiring to promote equal employment opportunity in the workplace.

The roundtable, titled “Skills Based Hiring: Removing Barriers and Paving Pathways to an Inclusive Workforce,” was the third in a continuing series of the Hiring Initiative to Reimagine Equity (HIRE) roundtables. The discussion engaged a broad variety of stakeholders in pursuit of the common goal of addressing key hiring and recruiting challenges that prevent underrepresented communities from accessing good jobs.

“Many employers — the federal government included — are re-examining degree and hiring requirements to focus on an applicant’s abilities rather than where they learned them,” Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs Director Jenny R. Yang said during the roundtable. “In many cases, eliminating unnecessary educational requirements or narrow prior experience requirements for positions allows employers to select skilled workers from a diverse range of backgrounds. In many industries, business leaders are resetting their assumptions and expanding the pool of available talent.”

As the Society for Human Resource Management noted, more than 70 million people in the United States lack a college degree yet are skilled through alternative routes. “They might very well have military experience or workforce experience training or community college [experience],” Byron Auguste, CEO and co-founder of the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization Opportunity@Work said during the discussion. “Tens of millions have some college … But they are skilled above all through the work they do.”

SHRM cited 2022 research by The Burning Glass Institute indicating that in 2017, 51% of online job listings required a college degree; by 2021, 44% of them required a degree.

Laura Maristany, vice president of external affairs for Bitwise Industries, explains how the Fresno, California-based tech company has been successful with that hiring approach. “Developing inclusive technology starts with the assumption that our communities are full of untapped talent and potential,” she says. “Creating pathways for more representative tech talent starts with employers who value hands-on experience and build systems to screen people in. We do this by powering technology solutions across sectors with underestimated talent proving that human-driven approaches are not only the right thing to do but are also profitable.” The entire 88-minute roundtable can be viewed here.