Employers these days are moving to skills-based hiring — looking for signs that candidates have specific abilities rather than just checking for a college degree as a default qualification.
The embrace of competencies over credentials is driven by ongoing shortages of talent in many sectors, which was underlined just last week, when the U.S. Department of Labor reported a near-record 9.5 million job openings and a robust employment situation.
And government leaders are also pushing the trend: many state governors, for instance, have adopted skills-based hiring for state positions, and the U.S. House of Representatives’ Education and Workforce Committee is giving the approach attention.
Even with the momentum for skills-based hiring, though, degrees continue to be in demand and rewarded by employers with higher salaries. However, the educational alternatives to degrees, including various types of microcredentials, continue to grow — in part because they are more affordable, are often better connected to the needs of employers, and also because they are highly accessible and digitally delivered.
The bigger story often lost in the artificial “skills versus degrees” debate, however, is about how quickly employers are continuing to evolve their hiring practices with new technologies. These changes will have a potentially wide impact on higher education, opening up new opportunities, but also some potential challenges.
A Watershed Moment
We are living in a new era of rapid job-market change and continuous upskilling. Just as colleges and universities have found themselves adapting to this environment in recent years and embracing digital learning, employers are increasingly rethinking their business strategies as technological changes impact how they think about, acquire and develop their employees.
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