More employers are leaving behind college degree requirements and embracing a skills-based hiring approach that emphasizes strong work backgrounds, certifications, assessments, and endorsements. And soft skills are becoming a key focus of hiring managers, even over hard skills. Skills-based hiring continues.

Large companies, including Boeing, Walmart, and IBM, have signed on to varying skills-based employment projects, such as Rework America Alliance, the Business Roundtable’s Multiple Pathways program, and the campaign to Tear the Paper Ceiling, pledging to implement skills-based practices, according to McKinsey & Co.

“So far, they’ve removed degree requirements from certain job postings and have worked with other organizations to help workers progress from lower- to higher-wage jobs,” McKinsey said in a November report.

Skills-based hiring helps companies find and attract a broader pool of candidates who are better suited to fill positions the long term, and it opens up opportunities to non-traditional candidates, including women and minorities, according to McKinsey.

At Google

At Google, a four-year degree is not required for almost any role at the company — and a computer science degree isn’t required for most software engineering or product manager positions. “Our focus is on demonstrated skills and experience, and this can come through degrees or it can come through relevant experience,” said Tom Dewaele, Google’s vice president of people experience.

Similarly, Bank of America has refocused its hiring to use a skills-based approach. “We recognize that prospective talent think they need a degree to work for us, but that is not the case,” said Christie Gragnani-Woods, a Bank of America global talent acquisition executive. “We are dedicated to recruiting from a diverse talent pool to provide an equal opportunity for all to find careers in financial services, including those that don’t require a degree.”

Hard skills, such as cybersecurity and software development, are still in peak demand, but organizations are finding soft skills can be just as importanr, according to Jamie Kohn, research director in the Gartner Research’s human resources practice.

Soft skills, which are often innate, include adaptability, leadership, communications, creativity, problem solving or critical thinking, good interpersonal skills and the ability to collaborate with others.

“Also, people don’t learn all their [hard] skills at college,” Kohn said. “They haven’t for some time, but there’s definitely a surge in self-taught skills or taking online courses. You may have a history major who’s a great programmer. That’s not at all unusual anymore. Companies that don’t consider that are missing out by requiring specific degrees.”

A lessening of ‘degree discrimnation’

From 2000 through 2020 “degree discrimination,” cost employees who were skilled through alternative routes 7.4 million jobs, according to Opportunity@Work, a Washington-based nonprofit promoting workers who are skilled through alternatives routes. Alternative routes include skills learned on the job, in the military, through training programs, or at community colleges, for example.

“They are among our country’s greatest under-valued resources. The invisible casualties of America’s broken labor market. Where low-wage work is often equated with low-skill work and the lack of a degree is presumed to be synonymous with a lack of skills,” Opportunity@Work explains on its site.

Over the past few years, however, job postings with a degree requirement have dropped from 51% of jobs in 2017 to 44% in 2021, according to the Burning Glass Institute.

Much of the recent shift to skills-based hiring is due to the dearth of tech talent created by the Great Resignation and a growin number of digital transformation projects. While the US unemployment rate hovers around 3.5%, in technology fields, it’s less than half that (1.5%).

While many IT occupations have also seen degree requirements vanish, there remain three where bachelor’s degrees are still blocking the more than 70 million workers who have skills gained through alternatives to college, according Opportunity@Work:

• Computer & Information Systems Managers: 698,000 workers hold such jobs today — and 19% of them are alternatively trained. Yet, 94% of those jobs require a bachelor’s degree.

• Computer Programmers: 481,000 workers fill these jobs today, 21% of whom are alternatively trained. But 76% of those jobs require a bachelor’s degree.

• Computer Support Specialists: 539,000 workers now have these jobs, with 45% of them alternatively trained. And still, 45% of ttheose jobs require a bachelor’s degree.

Workplace Education

As many as 70% of organizations have rolled out some kind of workplace technology education in the past year, according to a survey of HR professionals and workers by digital consulting agency West Monroe.

“With this figure in mind, it will be imperative for these organizations to assess their workforce and invest in teaching their workers new skills instead of taking the time, effort and cost to fill a new position,” West Monroe said.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3689170/skills-based-hiring-continues-to-rise-as-degree-requirements-fade.html

https://www.techedmagazine.com/category/news-by-industry/

Skills-based hiring continues to rise as degree requirements fade

A growing number of organizations are dropping traditional college degree requirements in favor of skills gained through alternative methods.