Episode: 258

Episode Title: Where You Gain Your Skills Doesn’t Matter

In today’s hiring market, it’s more and more about the skills you possess—not where you got them. Find out more, coming up next on The Perna Syndicate.

Ep 258 show:

Welcome to The Perna Syndicate! This week, we’re talking about the way that recruitment in America is shifting toward a more skills-based approach. The country hit an all-time record in April with 9 million open jobs—and apparently not enough workers willing or able to fill them. So companies are rethinking their job requirements and, in particular, if they really need to require a college degree. 

A skills-based hiring philosophy is simple. An individual’s abilities have the greatest weight in the hiring decision—whether those abilities were gained in college, in an online course, in an apprenticeship, or wherever. It’s the skills that matter, not how or where they were attained. 

So how can people gain real-world job skills, aside from the college route? It starts as early as middle school—helping kids discover the broad career fields that interest them. Then, we build on that general awareness to help the student start honing their options during the high school years. 

With that comes meaningful career exploration, always in the direction the student wants to take, so that when he or she graduates, there’s already a plan for where to go next. And today, it doesn’t have to be college. There are so many different on-ramps to success: apprenticeships, specialized industry training, internships, licensures, credentials—it all depends on the specific career that the student wants to pursue. 

In today’s hiring market, it’s less and less about the degree and more and more about the skills. Where you gain your skills doesn’t matter; it’s the fact that you have them.

Tomorrow, we’ll talk about how changing one word in a job posting can make it significantly more attractive to potential candidates. See you then on The Perna Syndicate.