The Great Resignation, Proficiencies, Ingrained HR Practices, and Calling BS

One of my favorite scenes comes from "The Big Short" when Steve Carell’s character calls back to his office and tells one of his associates it is time to call BS. The following is my version of that conversation.

If we are to believe the headlines that bombard us daily, we might be tempted to think that we are living in an employees’ market. If you are like me, it is impossible to get through your daily news feed without seeing another story about the tight labor market that has resulted from the “Great Resignation.” At the same time, we also continue to hear about the demise of the university in favor of a skills acquisition. Indeed, for the last several years the roar of proficiencies trumping degrees has become deafening. While some industries, such as software development, have taken this mantra to heart and filled vacancies based on the qualifications, I am more than a little skeptical about how much this is truly being practiced and how much is simply lip service for the sake of PR. This is especially true with more senior positions.

Over the course of the last three months, I have been helping a friend try to find a new position after they were laid off in a round of budget-cutting. Over the course of the last 20 years, this individual has acquired a host of skills, including qualitative/quantitative/mixed methods research, UX research, instructional design, product management, editing/publication, and personnel management. Further, each of these skills has resulted in the delivery of numerous, highly acclaimed projects and products. Their resume and cover letter have been professionally manicured, references are beyond reproach, and they have solid interviewing skills.

So, you might rightly ask why has this person not been snapped up as soon as they came on the market? The answer is that, while a terminal degree holder, they do not have the “right” degrees that will allow hiring managers to check off the correct boxes - I have seen dozens of emails stating that the individual did not have the required qualifications for a given position. Given that there are narratives provided in the job history section of their resume, I can only assume that the customary ten second scan focused on the education section, with no attention given to the rest of the document. More likely though, the actual resume was never looked at by a human, rather a quick programmatic scan of the document provided a nice, concise educational summary that could be reviewed alongside other candidates in an instant.?

Granted there have been a few instances where an interview was requested, some of which are still in process, however, these were the exception rather than the norm. The real irony here is that many of the rejection letters have come from companies or institutions that make headlines by regularly professing that it is what a person knows as opposed to what degree they have that really matters.

Also, I admit that the above represents an n of 1, so to see if my perception was skewed, I took my resume and used an alias to submit applications to some of the same companies. (No, I am not looking for a job – I am quite happy where I am.) ?The result? My alias received back the same form rejection letters. Apparently, the hiring managers do not believe that I have the skills to: conduct rudimentary quantitative research, product manage the development of applications in the ed-tech sector, or engage in ed-tech platform architecting.

So, now I have an n of 2 (if my alias can be counted as a person), but the anecdotal data appears to be fairly convincing, which brings me back to where I started. Are we really living in an employees market where skills matter more than degrees or is it time to call BS? If we narrow the scope to entry-level developer positions, where certifications from coding bootcamps are routinely accepted the answer might be yes. If we are talking about hiring professionals who have built a set of skills over the course of their career, I strongly suspect the answer is adamantly no. Thus, I would suggest that as with so many stories of the moment, there is far more hype than reality to the idea of the Great Resignation and the acquisition of proficiencies over degrees will lead to any meaningful change. And, as long as hiring the best people is reduced to checking the correct boxes on an HR form, we will see employers continue to fail to attract and retain the best talent. Quite simply, we do have the opportunity to reinvent the workplace, but it appears that much of the opportunity will be squandered.