Embracing Experience: DOL Publishes Skills-Based Hiring Starter Kit

In the last two years or so, more than 20 states have removed or relaxed four-year degree requirements for many government jobs.

The private sector is embracing more skills-based hiring as well, looking to expand the talent pool and emphasizing experience and expertise as much as education, if not more so.

As employers everywhere rethink how they evaluate job applicants, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has introduced a new resource that aims to offer them “a guide for hiring better, faster.”

The DOL recently published the Good Jobs Initiative’s Skills-First Hiring Starter Kit, “designed to educate employers about the benefits of using skills-first hiring practices and encourage them to use those practices to build a better, more qualified workforce,” according to a DOL statement.

Developed in partnership with the U.S. Department of Commerce, and with input from 16 public and private sector as well as labor organizations, the new resource offers a “short guide to hiring, promotion and management built around worker skills, rather than relying on degree qualifications,” according to the DOL, noting that the department’s Good Jobs Principles promote skills-based hiring as a quality recruitment practice.

The new kit also outlines some of the reasons to adopt a more skills-based approach to hiring. For example, “skills-first strategies zero in on workers who can do the job and do it well,” according to the guide.

“These sometimes ‘hidden workers’ tend to be more productive and stay in a job longer. Skills-first strategies also can open more opportunities to veterans, who frequently have high skill levels and great workplace preparedness.”

Prioritizing candidates’ proven skills “can be a way of helping workers get ahead through good jobs,” Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su said in a statement.

“Our Starter Kit provides the blueprint for employers to take concrete steps to begin skills-first hiring and provide economic opportunity for workers who face barriers, not because they are not highly skilled, but because of where they attained those skills.”