How to lose the war for talent in one lazy step

What many call a “talent pipeline” issue is really a set of institutional and market failures. What we casually call “hiring” as we know it today is mostly “exclusionary hiring.” It needs to change.??

Currently, there are over 70 million U.S. workers who do not have a bachelor’s degree, but are Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARs) such as military service, certificate programs, community colleges, and on-the-job experience. Do STARs lack the skills, experience, aptitude, mindset and other qualities employers seek? Many employers never find out—since their hiring systems screen out talent if they lack college degrees, without ever assessing their skills.?

What if companies stopped leaving their hiring systems on exclusionary autopilot and instead intentionally built hiring systems designed to identify, seek out, and reward skills in prospective employees, however and whenever those skills were learned and earned.

In a recent Opportunity@Work “Opportunity Wrap," Cheston McGuire examined the disconnect between employers and applicants in today’s broken labor market, sharing smart suggestions on how to better utilize AI in hiring, and new perspectives on a clear lexicon for workforce development.

• Despite a record number of open jobs, getting hired hasn’t gotten any easier for the millions searching for work. One of the many causes are outdated hiring practices that screen out qualified applicants. In Vox, Rani Molla and Emily Stewart report that, “The endless quest to make hiring efficient has rendered it inefficient.” buff.ly/3CILyDs
• New York University’s Julia Stoyanovich writes in the Wall Street Journal that due to reliance on AI in hiring, we don’t see “whether the candidates they select are, in fact, better qualified than those who are rejected.” Stoyanovich suggests a more transparent system so applicants know why they’re rejected – and employers understand the talent they may be missing. buff.ly/3ELWbah
• Opportunity@Work and partner organizations led a #TalkAboutWork Twitter chat on the "Words of the Workforce" field guide published by WorkingNation.? Workforce leaders like the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s Ashley Putnam shared insights on the damaging impact of inaccurate terms: “When we frame job seekers as low-skill, we seek to address the skills gap without addressing the larger opportunity gap.” buff.ly/3ALJQRe

My Opportunity@Work colleagues and I are proud of the role we’ve been playing in changing the conversation on talent, skills, and hiring - with companies, educators, policymakers and others. But there’s one group we’ve never had to inform, who have understood the problem long before “the people in charge” got the message: STARs themselves. As the Great Resignation picks up pace, STARs are taking their talents to companies willing and able to recognize their skills and invest in their potential. Degree-dazzled employers who are still blind to STARs talent are already losing, as they’re about to find out. It’s time to #HireSTARs.

All the best,

Byron