It’s No Surprise That “Skills-Based” Hiring Has Not Worked
It’s No Surprise That “Skills-Based” Hiring Has Not Worked
A new report shows that, even after businesses announce dropping college degree requirements for jobs, most hire college graduates anyway.
This article outlines an opinion that organizations either tried skills based hiring and reverted to degree required hiring because it was warranted, or they didn't adapt their process in spite of executive vision.
Since this article is non industry specific, what are your observations or opinions of the technology sector? What about the general business sector?
Should first world employees of businesses be required to obtain degrees if they reasonably expect a business related job?
Do college experiences and academic rigor reveal higher achieving employees?
Is undergraduate education a minimum standard for a more enlightened society? Or a way to hold separation between classes of people and status?
Is a masters degree the new way to differentiate yourself where the undergrad degree was before?
Edit: multiple typos, I guess that's proof that I should have done more college 😄
To believe otherwise, you must believe that business leaders and hiring managers don’t know what they’re doing – that they are blindly following tradition or just lazy. [...]you’d need to believe that businesses have simply overlooked a better way to hire. That seems naïve.
IDK, Has the author ever worked anywhere? Talked to anyone who worked somewhere? READ SOME POSTS ON REDDIT ABOUT WORKING SOMEWHERE? The amount of times no one could understand why a business does what it does, seemingly to its own detriment, is staggering.
They are right that it's wrong to believe that people with college degrees don't have skills - some do. The issue is that it appears to practically be non correlated to each other. I've seen people with college degrees who clearly learned very little during that experience. I've seen people with no degree be very knowledgeable and skilled.
The other obvious question in regard to hiring is - if going to college was necessary to do a job, then surely the degree would matter. However, outside of limited situations, the thing they're looking for is a degree, not one related to the job they're hiring for. Also, degrees are stupidly expensive which at least has to drive up wages a little anytime there's some competition in the labor market.
I'd argue the biggest obvious mark against a degree really doing much is that it's relevant at most for the first job. After that, no one asks to see the degree, or cares what your GPA was, or whatever - because the much better skill assessment is actually doing a job in the field. At that point, while it's tradition to require a degree, it's literally a check box. If these companies thought about it better, they'd realize the hiring mostly ignores degrees for any position outside of literally the first one out of college. An obvious solution to this problem IMHO would be the probationary period. Set it for 6 months renewing for some period. You need some time having someone do the actual task to really know if they're going to be a good fit anyway.
In my mind, if a company wants to set a generalized education requirement, above high school, that company should be required to pay off its employees student loans. Otherwise it's using the education system as a subsidized training program.
Note I said generalized. Engineers, doctors, etc who desire to ever be employed can't stop at a bachelor's anyways. Even still, their employees should have to pick up their training tab.
Business has gotten a free pass for 40 years and look at the society they've created with it. Maybe civilization needs more than a love of money to sustain it. Crazy huh.
I spent the last 4 years working on this at a state-wide level at my last job, so I’ve seen a lot in this space. Skills based hiring is extremely effective when done right. The problem is that most employers don’t know how. They take the degree requirement off the listing and then go through the same interview processes as if nothing changed. In tech specifically, there is a huge highly skilled talent pool whose potential is going untapped because of a glass ceiling keeping them from senior positions. If employers were effective at identifying what applicants, and even existing employees, are capable of they’d have a much easier time filling roles and the ‘talent gap’ wouldn’t be nearly as severe as it is.
Started working for my current company as tech support. No degree, in a homeless shelter, just good with tech and helping people. It bothered me not understanding how things I supported worked, so I started to teach myself to code and offer ideas for potential fixes when submitting tickets. Ended up being approached and hired by the head of development who allowed me to continue learning on my own. I've been with them for 12 years now, and in the first few years hobbled together the product/feature which became their flagship. Find people who are eager and excited to learn and they'll thrive.
How do you write this article and not once reference I/O Psychology or the literature that examines how well various tests predict job performance? (e.g. Schmidt and Hunter, 1998)
I swear this isn't witchcraft. You just analyze the job, determine the knowledge and skills that are important, required at entry, and can't be obtained in a 15 minute orientation, and then hire based on those things. It takes a few hours worth of meetings. I've done it dozens of times.
But really what all that boils down to is get someone knowledgeable about the role and have them write any questions and design the exercises. Don't let some dingleberry MBA ask people how to move Mt. Fuji or whatever dumb trendy thing they're teaching in business school these days.
This is a TERRIBLY written article.
From my exp in tech has been getting to know people on projects and getting known is been 100% the way to go.
What is someone good at and how they work with a team is best seen by working with someone. Getting started though just means taking the shit work and being willing to learn more your own.
Code has been skills-based for as long as I’ve been working. The few places I’ve seen that really have a hard degree requirement are not places I’d work. Most CS degrees are also mostly worthless for most app jobs because the theory is not the practice. There are degree programs that focus on shipping applications. In my own hiring, I’m looking for experience over degree and potential over buzzword bingo.
I could see it working for some roles, but I am an engineer and the degree is both required by my company and necessary to actually do the work.
That said, 80% of my job is not degree-specific and could be done by anyone who pays attention and asks questions, but the 20% is the kicker. Maybe I could do the job of five engineers and replace the other 4 with experienced technicians to cover the 80%s.
Skill-based hiring is more complex than “traditional” experience/education based hiring but it can work really well for orgs. that really invest in this method of hiring.
And by investing I mean they train and empower their recruiters to spot and assess the skills the business is looking for.
Many businesses talk the talk but don’t set themselves up skills-based hiring.