Every day, businesses miss out on talented people because their gifts, aptitudes, and skills are not as easy to identify as a degree on a resume. Ninety percent of HR professionals value skilled credentials, yet they are between two and three times more likely to progress a candidate with a degree than one without, even when the job posting does not explicitly indicate a degree is necessary.
Why this disconnect? Because shifting from a degree-centric to skills-centric organization requires overcoming significant barriers that can be expensive or arduous for HR leaders to navigate on their own.
The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) is working to tackle those barriers by providing employer partners access to tools, training options, and action pathways that ease adoption of skills- and aptitude-based hiring and retention strategies.
Through a series of high-touch pilots, SHRM is connecting employers with “whole human” talent strategies that align hard skills, soft skills, and aptitude to more fully and fairly match jobseekers with opportunity. These pilots serve dual purposes: they create a growing number of exemplars for would-be skilling champions to point to, and they allow employers to identify and assess the tools and training options to help them shift their talent paradigm.
Pacxa, a technology provider and systems integrator based in and focused on helping local businesses in Hawai’i, participated in the Employer Collaborate for Skilled Credentials (ECSC) pilot program, which was conducted by the SHRM Foundation in partnership with Jobs for the Future, and made possible by funding from the Charles Koch Foundation.
Employers who participated in the ECSC pilot indicated improvement across all core measures, including increased recognition of the role of skills- and aptitudes-first strategies in driving talent goals; knowledge of where and how to find qualified, skilled candidates without degrees; acknowledgement that their current education requirements are excessive; and increased alignment around a skills-first approach from the C-suite to the hiring manager.
In addition, the HR leaders involved in the pilot reported across-the-board increases in new hiring and promotion practices at their employers, which implies that enacting one skills-first strategy sparks others.
Jean Schneider, Executive Director of Workforce Development for Pacxa, was the driving force for their involvement with the ECSC pilot. She recently sat down for an interview about the program, Pacxa’s reasons for participating in the pilot and more generally embracing skills-first strategies, and where the company goes from here. Read the interview below.
Give me a little background on Pacxa and why you joined the Employer Collaborative for Skilled Credentials pilot program.
Pacxa harnesses the power of world-class technologies to help local businesses realize their full potential. We deliver customized solutions that enable nearly 400 commercial, government, and nonprofit organizations across Hawaiʻi to maximize opportunities and pursue innovation.
We joined the Employer Collaborative for Skilled Credentials pilot program because of the opportunity to accelerate our early talent program progress and learn more about how we can integrate credentialing into our retention strategies.
How ready would you say Pacxa was to shift your practices towards a skills-inclusive mindset when you started?
During COVID, Hawaiʻi had one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation, reaching a high of 37%. Tourism is one of our largest economic drivers, so the impacts to hotels, restaurants, retail, and other service industries were dire. Our CEO and President wondered if we might provide opportunities for those in service and other industries to enter more recession-resilient IT careers.
We wanted to recruit career changers, high school grads, college grads, and anyone with potential and equip them with the skills to succeed. We also wanted to help our existing staff continue to develop their skills and progress in their careers.
Each employer in the ECSC conducted a different project. What was Pacxa’s?
Our project focused on mapping competencies and certifications in one of our internal career pathways as a skills-based retention strategy. We mapped the beginning part of the pathway starting from our entry as a fellow (similar to an intern) through several positions in our Managed Services pathway. At the same time, we instituted a Certifications Incentive Policy that provides monetary incentives for staff to attain IT industry certifications.
Why do you think skills-based hiring and retention strategies are important?
Not everyone has the opportunity to take a traditional degree path. There is a lot of diverse talent that we would be missing if we only looked at those with degrees.
Skills-based retention strategies are important especially in IT where technologies change quickly and skills need to be constantly updated. Continuous investment in our staff’s professional development is critical to meeting the needs of our customers, and at the same time conveys to our staff that we value them and support their career development.
As you were going through the ECSC pilot and implementing your project, what were the biggest barriers you came up against? How did you address those?
The biggest challenges were leadership’s capacity to work on the project. In any organization, there are many competing demands and daily fires that often push back strategic initiatives. We tackled that by asking to work with on-the-ground staff for vital information.
Our teams are always willing to help whenever they can, so I did not expect resistance. But I did expect time constraints—and they did come up. So gentle tenacity and follow up was key here.
Do you plan on continuing to implement skills-based hiring and retention strategies for Pacxa going forward? What are you working on next in that space?
Yes, with the ECSC project we mapped the beginning part of one pathway. Pacxa will continue to map competencies and credentials along that pathway and use it as a framework for pathways in other business units.
If you had the ability to wave your hand and have 1-2 things at your fingertips that would make your efforts to shift towards skills easier, what would those things be? Why?
Hmm, access to funding would help us scale these efforts and help expand our training program. At this time, we are training for our internal needs but our long-term goal is to help build a local IT talent pipeline for our community. For private industry, public funds are difficult to access.
Finally, if you were talking to someone who was just starting to drive a shift towards skills-based hiring and retention practices in their employer, what advice or guidance would you give them?
Get buy in from the top levels and have your leadership champion it — this will pave the way for the on-the-ground work.
Read the full article here
