Tear the Paper Ceiling with Skills-Based Hiring

“I work with a group of scientists who love me because I literally am on top of everything they need,” says Julie, an office administrator who’s a STAR - a worker Skilled Through Alternative Routes, rather than a bachelor’s degree. “They don’t [need to] think about stuff like who’s doing payroll today, or how am I getting paid, or how’s that form getting filled out?” Julie takes care of all of that.

Julie lists her key skills as customer service, organization, patience, and perseverance. Throughout her career, she’s been trained and certified for technical programs needed to do her job, such as Excel and Quicken. If Julie doesn’t know how to do something, she takes the time to figure it out: “A lot of times, it’s just doing it,” she explains.??

What Julie’s accomplished over the course of her career is increasingly rare for STARs. In fact, as this video and Opportunity@Work’s Rise with the STARs report make clear, STARs, who make up half the US workforce, have been losing access to good middle- and high-wage jobs for decades, often relegating them to lower-wage work that doesn’t reflect the value of their skills. The 15 jobs highlighted in the video – including Julie’s office administrator role – represent the jobs that employed the largest number of STARs 20 years ago. As employers have shifted to relying on degrees over skills, STARs have been displaced from 7.4 million jobs that had offered economic security and upward mobility, such as registered nurses, managers, and administrative assistants. Even more alarming? STARs who are still able to move into middle- and high-wage roles earn less than their colleagues with bachelor’s degrees in the exact same role. Because employers overlook and undervalue STARs’ skills, STARs have to put in 30 years of work to earn what a college graduate makes on their very first day of work.

While Julie was earning a good salary, she lost her job during COVID – and hit the paper ceiling as she looked for a new role. “I think in some ways I was overqualified,” she explains. “They just needed somebody with that college degree, even though I probably had as much experience and could do the job just as well as anybody with a college degree.” Julie landed the job she’s in now, but she’s an outlier. “Many of my fellow admins have college degrees,” Julie says. “I’m thankful they took a chance on me. And clearly, I didn’t let them down.”

Even though she got the job, it came with a real cost for Jule. She had to take a pay cut to get in the door. Julie’s not the only STAR who has the skills to succeed at a higher-paying job. Opportunity@Work’s Reach for the STARs report found that there are 32 million STARs who already have valuable skills for jobs that offer significantly higher salaries than their current role.?

This isn’t just a problem for STARs. Overlooking half the workforce hurts employers, too. Employers can solve perceived talent shortages and improve diversity at their organizations by focusing on skills instead of bachelor’s degree and recognizing the capabilities of the entire workforce. It’s a collective effort to rewire the labor market to remove the barriers that hold back STARs.?

-

This blog post was written by Ashley Edwards , Director of Data Services at Opportunity@Work.

More Opportunity@Work research: