Are you hiring people based on their diploma and previous job titles? Or do you evaluate talent based on their skills and abilities? On this episode of The People Purpose Podcast, Chas and Julie discuss skills-based hiring and different ways you can change your approach to hiring. Plus, in the business stat of the day, find out how many executives think their organization should help employees learn new, relevant skills, and how many are actually doing something about it.
Are you hiring people based on their diploma and previous job titles? Or do you evaluate talent based on their skills and abilities? On this episode of The People Purpose Podcast, Chas and Julie discuss skills-based hiring and different ways you can change your approach to hiring. Plus, in the business stat of the day, find out how many executives think their organization should help employees learn new, relevant skills, and how many are actually doing something about it.
Hey y'all. Welcome to the people purpose podcast, the show that explores all the ins and outs, challenges and opportunities, HR people, managers and all people face at work every single day. My name is Chas Fields and I am here with my workplace. Bestie dearest friend, I'm running out of adjectives. Jules, I feel like I've used with you. I'm with you. Who are you?
Julie Develin:Hi, everybody, Julie Develin. Chas, good to see you,
Chas Fields:too. Am I Am I a little echoey? Actually, it's not that bad. It's not that bad. Okay, I was gonna say I can plug in headphones, if I'm a little echoey probably
Julie Develin:don't sound that echoey. I mean, we have, we have this high level production studios. So you know.
Chas Fields:It's been four years. So it's good to see you what's on your mind
Julie Develin:sneakers. So I have this obsession right now. It's really bad. It's really bad. So let me give you a little backstory. So when I was I was really big into CrossFit for years and years and years, like competitor level the whole deal, it was crazy times. And I used to buy what are called Reebok Nanos, and I have an inordinate amount of Reebok Nano shoes, but I don't buy those anymore. Those were CrossFit shoes. But I don't buy those anymore. I got a pair of dunks as a gift Nike dunks as a gift, and now the floodgates have been open and I want every color of Nike dunks. And that's not great for space issues, and also for my wallet. But that's what's on my mind, Chas. I'm obsessed right now with with
Chas Fields:sneakers. It gets expensive, quick. Yeah. Yeah. And it's,
Julie Develin:and I don't need you know, I recognize this comes from a huge place of privilege, right? Like, I see a pair I get them because I love them. You know? And, and then then let me go. Let me go here chas. You have to? You're
Unknown:acting like I have a choice.
Julie Develin:No, no. And then I have to get outfits to match though.
Chas Fields:So anyway, also, for our audience, this is also the same person that matched their mask with their outfit during COVID times and I'm not bashing you, because I'm the only one. You were not the only one. But if you go listen to like, season one or two, like episode, I don't know. 25. Right, you're gonna realize that Julie had an obsession with maths of every color and size are not science, but design. Yeah, like the gas mask from the, you know, from the war, you know what I mean that they had the big filter on the front. So
Julie Develin:as long as it was a cool color, and maybe it branded?
Chas Fields:Yeah. So what's on my mind, you know, Julie, the weather's turning, the weather's turning. So Texas has three seasons green, brown and dark brown. And the weather's turning and we're starting to see a little bit of growth right now, which is fantastic. Not great for my allergies. That's okay. Zyrtec is my friend and this time of year, but it's good to see the sun to see the sun and it's really good to see some green out there and it's prime for you know, me, I love playing golf. It's prime for getting out there and hitting that little white ball around and so,
Julie Develin:play golf in a long time. It's gonna be real bad when I play golf again.
Chas Fields:Are you playing in San Diego with us?
Julie Develin:I don't know. No, I don't know. But I lost my pitching wedge. I don't know where it is.
Chas Fields:You're one of those. One of those
Julie Develin:pitching wedge when you put it on the green every time.
Chas Fields:Unless you're 120 out you're like, I hate my seven iron.
Julie Develin:I don't know. But you know, do I need a pitching wedge if I have a gap wedge? Doesn't matter. I don't know it. Can I just my 900
Chas Fields:golfer in me is screaming it absolutely matters.
Julie Develin:It can you buy me a fishing line around
Chas Fields:it? Yeah, well, we'll figure it out. Anyways. So as we do every episode business stat of the day, I'm working from two monitors one's above Julie, which is why it doesn't look like I'm looking at you. So there's just gonna be 7% 77% of business executives agree their organization should help their workers become more employable with relevant skills. But only 5% strongly agree they are investing enough and helping people learn new skills to keep up with the changing world of work according to a Deloitte study, Deloitte,
Julie Develin:Deloitte with the with the study and, you know, so you have business executives that say they my organization should help workers become more employable with with with skills but oh, by the way, we're not really we're not going to put any money behind it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, this is this sets the stage what we're going to talk about today on today's episode, and, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna just throw it out there, Chas, I would imagine that people are kind of upset now that we're talking about this, because people probably want to hear us banter about pitching wedges. But I digress. You know, set setting the stage for what we're going to talk about today, skills based hiring and skills based hiring is really this method and this approach to recruiting where we're looking at people based on their specific skills rather than relying on what would be traditional qualifiers, if you will, like education or experience or even prior job titles, I think if we look at where we are today, in hiring, and where people are today in the world of work, are in the jar, right? We need to take a different approach because we need to prioritize skills abilities, you know, for specific role, and and this, this actually leads to a more equitable hiring process. But you know, I think, yeah, what do you think? No,
Chas Fields:going back to the study, I find it astonishing that we have people leaders, whoever Deloitte surveyed and as that are like, Absolutely, we know, the world of work is changing. We know the world of work is evolving. We know that people are evolving. We know the demands and needs and employee expectations are moving. And we know that we need to, and we need to invest into our people to make sure that our business is sustainable. But I'm not going to spend the money. So I'm like, and I, the inner change management. And I don't know what you would say that the person who understands business in me is like, it's fascinating. It goes back to when you and I talked to Chris Todd a while back that it's like, if you don't invest in your people, and they decide they don't want to change. It's really hard for your business to sustain itself.
Julie Develin:Yeah. And UKG does walk the talk. They're phenomenal. Yeah, we're great, because we have a ton of learning resources at our fingertips that the company has provided us. So
Chas Fields:yeah. So so I just I think it's I think it's wild to me, but going back to, to the skills thing, and skills based hiring. I think what we should probably do is let's inform a little bit here, Julie on what it actually is. But it's it's some of it is focused on skills and competencies. Right. So from from a job description perspective, it usually lists out the essential skills, desired skills required for the role, right. And it tells you specifically what some of those tasks and responsibilities are. But there are other things that go along with that. Do you want to talk about? Yeah,
Julie Develin:yeah, I mean, even things like potential of someone, you know, looking, looking at a candidate's ability to, to learn to adapt to new challenges. And that's not always easy to figure out. But you can look at someone's resume or you get or have conversations with them about where they've been, I really find I really think that there's something to the fact that there are so many different transferable skills that are there with someone who does a completely opposite or completely different job. Look, I've gotten to this example many, many times, but I just go back to my dad and his career in sales, and going from sales to being an extremely successful bartender at a country club. Trance parables. He was selling plastic letters that you put on buildings, and now he's making drinks, but it's still there are transferable skills there that go, you know, my brother, my brother was a police officer, right when he went from the police officer role and he's now it also in sales, right? But so much of that was based upon someone giving him a shot, knowing that his that he had the skills, the people skills, the negotiation skills, all of that to succeed in a sales role. And now that and now he is
Chas Fields:so some of that does come from judgment free, you know, judgment free or bias free measurements, if you will, right. Like I when I think about your father, I think Think about, he was selling something product, good service, etc. But it was also selling an experience right. And in some ways he was selling the person that he was to the individual sitting across from them. Now he's selling an experience at a country club in a bar, right? It's it's, Hey, that, you know, this person knows my drink order, this person always has it ready for me. They he knows the name of my kids, like, you know, your dad, he knows he knows everybody's backstory. It's crazy.
Julie Develin:I actually saw an action a few weeks ago, I actually went to went to the country club, and I hung out with them. A new golf bag. That's another story.
Unknown:So I'm not a pitching, pitching wedge,
Julie Develin:pitching wedge that I don't have. And everybody that came in, you know the name, he knew the drink. He had the drink before the person sat down. It was incredible. Right. But again, you know that aside, that aside, I want to talk a little bit, Chas about why we're talking about this topic today. The skills based hiring, you know, I wanted to kind of set the scene because this is this topic, this conversation that you and I you know, when we talk about what we're going to discuss on the podcast, you know, we come up with a topic and then kind of like, just think about what do we want to talk about regarding that topic. And this came about based on a LinkedIn post that absolutely triggered me. And lit it was an article on LinkedIn. That said, that sparked this conversation that college enrollment said the college enrollment is rising for the first time since the pandemic. And that's according to the National Student Clearinghouse. So, you know, the number of students attending undergraduate programs is up, compared to last year, community colleges are seeing big increases, because those schools are focused more on vocational programs, and those vocational programs are really, really popular these days. You know, the other thing that's really popular is the shorter term degrees. And, you know, I think that it's really interesting when we look at when we look at this, because what it did Chazz is it. It sparked it sparked this existential crisis in me, but let me let me let you respond to that real quick, the vocational thing? Yeah.
Chas Fields:So I think people know that I grew up in a blue collar town, right. And if you don't know, I grew up in a blue collar town. And it's what I knew, it's what it's what I knew, it's what I still know, especially working with a lot of organizations that I deal with now, but from an advisory perspective, and one of the things that we were taught or conditioned in my, you know, upbringing, was the only way that you get out of the town or, or you get the next big job, or you climb the ladder was get a college education, right. And like you have master's degree, I have a master's degree, we've got, you know, certifications, all of those things. And then 2008 hit, right and this, I'm aging myself here a little bit. But this was in the prime of when I was in college. And it became this kind of what we're going down the lane of, well, you have to have two years experience for an entry level job, you have to have a four year college degree and two years of experience for an entry level job. And I get the need for college to some degree, I get the need for that. Because there are places that there are individuals and communities that they need that next level of education when it comes to when it comes to university. On the flip side, we now have a massive shortage in blue collar workers across the nation. You know, I think about trade schools, I think about electricians, I think about plumbers, you know, these are things that are in short right now based on the labor models that I've looked at. And you're talking about six figure jobs that were looked down upon and finger quotes for those of you not watching fair, they look down upon and I'm like, What are we doing here?
Julie Develin:On so many phones. I mean, if your air conditioner goes out, you're not looking down upon somebody that's going to come in and fix that air conditioner.
Chas Fields:That person is your hero. That's exactly right. And in Texas in the middle of summer, when it's 115 My goodness, right? You're willing to pay X amount of dollars to make that happen. But it's this idea that we have to change the way that we look at this holistically, not just hey, you have to have a four year degree or a two year degree that we have to change the way that we think about the narrative of saying, listen, doesn't matter what job you work, like you're trying to do the best that you can and I don't care if you're a professor or someone who comes and fixes whatever like it does not matter but there. There is. There's a lot of grace that we need to have and kind of change the narrative and broaden the perspective and a little bit more judgment free way. Does that make sense? Yeah.
Julie Develin:And let me tell you why this topic, this skills based hiring versus College, really, it really sort of get that mean. So I want to actually read a post that I did on LinkedIn. For those of you who follow Chaz and I on LinkedIn, please, or who don't follow us, please follow us on LinkedIn. But it was, again, based upon this LinkedIn news article that I that I saw, and I commented on, or I, you know, did my own posts because it sparked this, this thought within me, so the actual post that I that I did said something like, you know, in addition to my HR career, I've been teaching higher ed for around 18 years, you know, and it's cool when my two professions intersect, but sometimes it causes inner turmoil. So when I see something regarding skills based hiring, and the positive sentiments towards higher education are diminishing among the masses, the HR part of me says, of course, skills based hiring is the way the future do candidates really need to get into have degree for all the jobs that are applying for? And the answer to that is likely no. Right? How is it right for everyone, and not everyone has the resources or the opportunity to attend college based upon life situations. But I take that another way to go to the educator, half of me, I shudder when I read about the dropping numbers and the lower sentiment towards higher ed, because school a lot of schools are closing completely or closing significant departments. And to me, the value of a college experience can't really be quantified, because, you know, it was the Met, it was the life experience I learned from college and the personal growth and the even the fun that I had during those days. And really, I can't imagine my professional life without having had those experiences. And I bet some folks who are listening, you know, might feel the same way. However, one of the things that that I do, did you want to say something? No, go ahead. One of the things that one of the things that I do, when I when I come up when I come to this, this area of my head, like where I have this inner turmoil, you know, we have to recognize that I think two things can be true at the same time, college enrollment can rise, college enrollment can remain stable, but employers can still see value in skills based hiring.
Chas Fields:I agree with you 100%. So there are specific jobs that I still think required a college education and in practice and things like that, like like a doctor, you know what I mean? That's right. patient
Julie Develin:base. I don't want somebody who doesn't have a degree, doesn't
Chas Fields:have an MD and is like, Hey, we gotta take your pancreas out. Yeah, yeah. I think I think when it comes to skills based hiring, especially with the labor participation shortage, and what we're experiencing, from an economic perspective, with more jobs being open than people alive to some degree, we have to be willing to go seek people outside of the box and do the skills based hiring we have to, because here's the deal. If your company does, going back to the original study, if they educate people who may not have had a chance to get a four year, you know, college degree, but they're phenomenal at being a self starter. They're motivated, they do a lot of external reading outside of the organization, they do things that aren't normal within their job, or within societal goals, you know, society's way of saying you have to do X, Y, and Z and check the box to get this job that you want. If we go the route of skills based hiring, I think you will see a remarkable increase in the talent that's actually capable of doing the job that you're hiring for.
Julie Develin:Yeah, it opens up, it opens up a huge pool of additional candidates. Right? Yeah. Can you imagine your professional life without having had the college experience?
Chas Fields:Meaning the college degree or the college experience?
Julie Develin:Because remember what I said, you know, I don't know about you, but for me, I learned I learned how to be an adult in college.
Unknown:I don't
Chas Fields:that's a hard question to answer because number one, I don't know any different. Yeah, no, I don't know any different. However, I have peers of my friends of mine who did not get a college degree and they still had to figure it out. Right. Like they still had to figure out life, they still have to figure out how to pay bills, they still had to figure out all of those things. I don't think college is the you know, the whatever the foundation of figuring those things out. However, I will tell you, I did not take advantage of my undergrad in the way that I should have. I was much more social focused than what I was school wise, and it wasn't until I did my masters Well, I wouldn't even that I'm just I'm a social butterfly, Julie. And and it wasn't until I started doing my masters that I was like, Oh, wow, I would have enjoyed undergrad a lot more had I actually paid attention from the education side. But I figured it out. So I think it's both I think a lot of it is how do you approach the work and what you want to do and how you want to live your life long term. And at the end of the day, you hear me say all the time, you got to do the work, whether you have a college degree or not, like if you want to be successful, whatever your defined success is, you have to do something to make that happen. Whether it's in college or not, what about you?
Julie Develin:Yeah, I couldn't I really couldn't imagine. I I feel like though, What college did for me, well, actually, what Master my master's degree did for me, because undergrad, I was an English major, I had no idea what I wanted to do. And I've told this story, I believe before my dad said, You should go get a go get a master's degree I said and what he said in HR, and then he's, you know, I still ask telling myself, asking myself, what's HR? Right?
Unknown:Personnel? Personnel, right. Yeah,
Julie Develin:you want to talk about aging someone? So? So, you know, I, I, for me, it's less about don't take this the wrong way. Let's not the education more about the growing up. Again, that's a life thing. Right? That's, that's a perspective thing. And that's, uh, yeah, meeting people where they are thing, because there are some people who, who had to grow up way before, you know, what, in high school, right, I mean, based on their life circumstances, but from an employer perspective, you know, I think I think that employers would be really would be well suited to look into skills based hiring for whatever roles that you you have open. And if you do have roles that are open, and you're requiring a college degree, really ask yourselves, or really take a look as to the why behind that. What, what and by the way, if it's a college degree, what degree is it any degree? Like? Is it just having a BA? or Yes, like, if I'm going to be an engineer, and I have a degree in communications, does that translate?
Chas Fields:I have a comment on that, because what I've noticed over the last decade, that's trended downward. So when I applied for a job, and I've been in the professional workforce for what, 12 years now, right, 12
Julie Develin:years, so old,
Chas Fields:or early on, it was you must have a business degree and, you know, a generic business degree or business degree in Management, right. And then it was, you know, they were very specific in the track that you, you needed to qualify for certain positions. Now, if you notice a lot of the job requisitions that are out there that they want a degree, it doesn't require a business degree, it just requires a four year college degree,
Julie Develin:the value of the MBA has gone down as well.
Chas Fields:Isn't that interesting? Yeah. Yeah. It's
Julie Develin:no longer it's no longer must have MBA or equivalent, whatever the equivalent is, right? I mean, or years of experience in management? You know, I don't know that there's a right answer or wrong answer for all employers. But what I think an answer needs to be is taking a look at the way that you're doing your hiring. And are you? Are you are you requiring a degree? Because that's what we've always done. And the way Yeah, and the way that the world is now we can't do what we've always done,
Chas Fields:right? So let's talk about the benefits of skills based hiring because we educated a little bit on that. So I'm going to run through these before you the other point. It helps improve hiring accuracy, it increases your ability to hire it both from the diversity perspective and inclusive perspective. You have enhanced employer brand. This is actually really cool because if you remember my quote at Aspire when we did the closing keynote session, it remembers your I know, it's the one moment I have it on their wall. The one moment I get a year okay, was employer brand is going to impact your loyalty and commitment through and through because statistics have proven that and it's even exacerbated now, where where we are. But it's this idea from an employer brand perspective. It's it's people who appreciate the approach to recruitment of like, Man, I don't have to fit in the proverbial bubble of years and years and years of what has been decided. I have a shot at this company and if I have a shot, that means my friends or peers as are others may have a shot to when they may not have had the resources that you and I had to be able to go to college. Right? Increased productivity, improved employee experience, there's better efficiency. Do you want to talk about the challenges?
Julie Develin:Well, yeah, I mean, the challenges, there's lots of different challenges, you know, it, like defining what relevant skills you're looking for. Sometimes that's difficult, you know, you have to have your ducks in a row, and you have to have your stuff together, if you will, before you take this approach. 100%, right, you have to do studies, you have to make sure that the right internal stakeholders are involved in the process. You know, sometimes those writings or internal stakeholders are the incumbent in the position, because you asked that person, you know, maybe you hired based on some sort of criteria, but that job maybe has changed. And then you're hiring, you know, we see that we see that in our role, you know, we're we're, our how our role has evolved, how are all role has changed? I think if, if I was applying to this current role that I'm in that UKG now, five years, or today, it would be completely different in terms of in terms of the qualifications, but anyway, um, you know, I think that careful planning and just like anything else in business, a process of continuous improvement, can really unlock benefits of skills based hiring and I do want to mention one other thing before we start to wrap up here. Our second megatrend, Dr. Jared Conrad, Greenham, Austin and workforce Institute. Definitely check out our megatrends if you haven't checked out our previous podcasts with Jarrett Dr. Conrad on the the mega trends. But our second mega trend is from buying and borrowing to building and mining when it comes to employees and the employee. And that is all skills based, because we're basically upskilling and rescaling our current employees in order to fill future roles. Right.
Chas Fields:Right. No, you're you're spot on there, I think. And we could we could go down this path. I don't know that we have time. But I was thinking about, you know, for and against the college degree discussion. Right. And, and there's arguments for both, right, there's arguments for both, like you said, what I find interesting about each of these, going back to that from borrowing and buying to building and mining. Where, where companies have to be better about balancing this is, a lot of times, it often boils down to the dollar, right? It really does, it boils down to the dollar. And what people don't realize is that people with college degrees typically come at a higher price when it comes to salary. Right. And this is why I love the megatrend piece of of building and mining, because you already have an existing workforce, you already have them. And they may be committed, they may not, they may be loyal to you, they may not. But if I have the opportunity to go to them and sharpen the scale, help them build a skill, help them grow in the position that they're in or give them an opportunity in another area of the business that they could potentially learn, right? You've heard me say this in many of my talks, where you have an opportunity to keep an employee versus lose one, find one, recruit, train develop, and you start that cycle back over. There are people that have the best ideas within your workforce. And you just won't go ask the question. Right? And I would say go ask the question. Does that make sense? Yeah.
Julie Develin:So you know, just finishing up moving into the future, I think this debate will always continue. And I think that the value or the devaluing whichever way you want to go of the college degree, it's going to evolve, it's going to change it's going to adapt to whatever the job market is over the over the period of time in which we're living. But I think that skills based hiring is definitely a trend that's here to stay. And you know, it there's there's so many there's so many benefits to it, in addition to challenges, but I think the benefits oftentimes outweigh the challenges. And as a high as someone who teaches who someone who's in higher education I, it's cool. It's cool, right? I think that again, two things can be true at the same time, college can still be a thing, skills based hiring can still be a thing. But I think what it also means, which is a discussion for another day is that college students need to take more control over their experience and figure out which skills they need to learn alongside getting the degree because I think that the degree is not going to just be enough anymore,
Chas Fields:which is a great plug that we're hiring interns right now. So if you're interested in you're a real go getter, right, does that bother you? By the way when it says that in the job description and you see from different like, you've got to go get a job I agree. But you got to be better about that. So like, if I represent us, if we I found my purpose. And if we stop having these conversations, we become obsolete and disconnected from the workforce, and more importantly, that people who, you know, either underrepresented or there's an opportunity for others to grow, we're probably going to have this same discussion any year, and we may have a completely different take. But if we stop having the discussion we just fall into the same way. We've always done it. And I know we're not that way. Julie, what about you? Yeah, there's
Julie Develin:no one size fits all approach here. And we need to be sure we understand our business and the needs of our business, the needs of our people, the kinds of people who are trying to attract them and the kind of people that we want to retain and I think either method skills based or not, might work, it might not work and fact of the matter is, we need to be more. We need to be more cognizant of our business needs, and go at it from a proactive rather than reactive strategy. So that said, A few reminders for relieved don't forget, like, subscribe, use the hashtag people respond on social media sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, you should check out the latest blogs and research and workforce Institute at UK g by visiting workforce institute.or Chas. That's it.
Chas Fields:Thanks for listening out. Cheers. Bye