Skills-Based Hiring Is on the Rise
Fuller, J., Langer, C., & Sigelman, M. (2022, February 11). Skills-Based Hiring Is on the Rise. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2022/02/skills-based-hiring-is-on-the-rise
Joseph Fuller, Christina Langer, and Matt Sigelman write: "Early in the 2000s, a significant number of employers began adding degree requirements to the descriptions of jobs that hadn’t previously required degrees, even though the jobs themselves hadn’t changed. The trend — sometimes known as 'degree inflation' — became particularly pronounced after the Great Recession of 2008-2009, at which point leaders in government, business, and community-based organizations recognized that a reset was in order. Many large corporations soon announced that they would eliminate degree requirements in much of their hiring."
"A decade has now passed, and it seems time to ask: Have companies followed through? ... To find out, we partnered with Emsi Burning Glass, a leading labor-market data company, and analyzed more than 51 million jobs posted between 2017 and 2020. What we’ve learned is that employers are indeed resetting degree requirements in a wide variety of roles. The change is most noticeable for middle-skill positions — defined as those requiring some post-secondary education or training but less than a four-year degree. To a lesser extent, the change is also noticeable at some companies for higher-skill positions."
"[Companies may] believe that college graduates possess more-refined social, or 'soft,' skills — the ability to work in groups, say, or to communicate efficiently in real-time, or to prioritize tasks. These skills are far harder to assess, and our analysis strongly suggests that as a result many employers are using college degrees as a proxy for them. Employers who eliminated degree requirements, we found, frequently added more-detailed soft-skills requirements in their postings."
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Photo Source: (2022). Skills-Based Hiring Is on the Rise [Photograph]. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2022/02/skills-based-hiring-is-on-the-rise