In this episode of Work in Progress, we’re talking about skills-first hiring, the policy of hiring based on talent and skills as opposed to a degree or job title. Opportunity@Work has been a long-time advocate for skills-first hiring as a pathway to good careers and economic mobility through its Tear the Paper Ceiling awareness campaign.

Skills-first proponents are calling on employers to remove four-year degree requirements for thousands of high-wage jobs to open up opportunity to more people.

The nonprofit’s chief impact office Papia Debroy and its vice president of STARs policy Blair Corcoran de Castillo join me on the podcast to discuss a new study of the impact of prioritizing skills over degrees in hiring in state government.

“There are about 60 million workers who have a bachelor’s degree or a higher level of educational attainment. Obviously, these workers have traversed a critical pathway in our U.S. labor force,” explains Debroy. “But, in addition to them, there are 70 million who have a high school diploma, do not have a bachelor’s degree, but have been bringing extraordinary skills to work. These are workers who are skilled through alternative routes, or STARs.”

Those alternative routes could include community college, military service, or on-the-job experience.

“A lot of skills-first hiring is really about how do we surface this population of talent to really understand skills instead of pedigree when we consider who is qualified for different jobs in the United States,” Debroy adds.

So far, according to Opportunity@Work, 26 states have signed on to the idea of hiring or promoting state employees based on their skills, knowledge, and abilities, regardless of how they attained those skills.

“What’s really exciting is the civil service, who many people thought were going to be the biggest barrier to public sector hiring change, are actually real advocates of this,” says de Castillo.

To determine if skills-based hiring is making progress in terms of expanding opportunities for job seekers and workers without four-year degrees, de Castillo and Debroy and others authored a study of its effectiveness in state government.

“States are actually thinking more critically about what it means to access all of the talent in their communities, and they’re thinking about what it means for representation in government, trusting government, and improved citizen services and just government efficiency,” says de Castillo.

“We’ve seen real action. We’ve seen bachelor’s degree requirements decline by 2.5 percentage points year-over-year because of policy exposure. This has expanded access to the jobs for STARs tremendously. Right now with the 26 states, 570,000 STARs could gain access to jobs they couldn’t yesterday or the year before this happened,” she concludes.

Debroy adds, “The Paper Ceiling represents an invisible barrier of degree screens, of biased algorithms, of stereotypes, of exclusive professional networking. These are all characteristics that block career opportunities for workers who are skilled through alternative routes.

“The first set of actions [by the states] has led to an increased awareness of this population as a vast, overlooked, diverse, and skilled population of the workforce that had been historically overlooked for public sector jobs. What was so extraordinary was not just the number that Blair just shared, but also that we’re starting to see shifts in precisely the types of jobs that STARs have the skills for but have historically not had access to obtain in a lot of these states.

“We’re excited to see the progress in roles like IT roles and management roles in health care roles, a lot of jobs that have historically offered economic mobility to the American workforce,” Debroy tells me.

There is a lot more in the podcast on the impact of skills-first hiring on workers and job seekers in the public sector, as well as across all of the workforce.

You can listen to the entire conversation here, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find our podcasts on the Work in Progress YouTube channel.

BTW, in the podcast, we give you a sneak peek at the Opportunity@Work virtual live event detailing the impact of of skills-first hiring that’s coming up on April 24. Check it out and register here.

Learn more about the Tear the Paper Ceiling campaign here.

Learn more about skills-first hiring practices in this Good Jobs Initiative Skills-First Hiring Starter Kit published in November 2024 by the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Episode 353: Papia Debroy and Blair Corcoran de Castillo, Opportunity@Work
Host & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Theme Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4
Transcript: Download the transcript for this episode here
Work in Progress Podcast: Catch up on previous episodes here