Skills-based hiring: Focus on abilities, not degrees, says HIRE Initiative

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More employers are making efforts to remove hiring barriers and retain workers by recognizing and valuing skills regardless of how they were acquired — whether through a formal academic degree, on the job, or through the employee’s own experience. Recognizing that trend, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recently hosted an online discussion emphasizing the benefits of skills-based hiring to promote equal employment opportunity in the workplace.

The roundtable, titled “Skills Based Hiring: Removing Barriers and Paving Pathways to an Inclusive Workforce,” was the third in a continuing series of the Hiring Initiative to Reimagine Equity (HIRE) roundtables. The discussion engaged a broad variety of stakeholders in pursuit of the common goal of addressing key hiring and recruiting challenges that prevent underrepresented communities from accessing good jobs.