With college enrollment dropping, employers are turning to new ideas about what experience counts most in the hiring process.
Shifting attitudes College is not for everyone. For a multitude of reasons, many high school graduates do not go on to attend a four-year school. Perhaps the financing isn’t available for them to pursue a degree, they don’t want the burden of student loans following graduation or they prefer to enroll in a trade school to learn a specific skill. The attitude toward colleges and universities is also shifting. A recent Gallup poll found that 36% of Americans have a lot of confidence in higher education, while 32% have “some confidence,” and 32% have “little or no confidence.” In 2015, by comparison, 57% had a lot of confidence in higher education, and only 10% had little or none. In 2021, the Harvard Business Review reported that fewer high-school graduates pursued higher education in 2020 than in previous years. “College enrollments dropped by 6.8% in 2020, more than quadrupling the pre-pandemic rate of decline,” the study stated. “These trends, combined with the Great Resignation, have forced companies to rethink some of their more traditional hiring practices. When it comes to finding the right candidates, recruiters are now looking at talent pipelines outside of college pathways.” In what’s called “down-credentialing” or a “degree reset,” some major employers such as IBM dropped degree requirements from more than half of its U.S. job postings beginning in 2021. By dropping degrees, job postings are worded more specifically to seek pertinent skills for a position, and particularly soft skills. Focusing on skill sets Ryan Buxbaum, president of Next One Staffing in Santa Rosa, says that having a degree for some jobs “has now moved from the ‘must-have’ category to the ‘nice-to-have’ category” for many employers.” To illustrate his point, he says, “When you go fishing, if you
catch a lot of fish you can be picky about the ones you keep and the ones you throw back. When unemployment rates are so low and you only have one or two applicants for a certain position, you can’t be picky.” [In May, the unemployment rate in California was 5.2%, while the national average in June was 4.1%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.] People are posting jobs but not getting a lot of response, he explains. “This is a trend we are seeing more often now, and in the past it was more important to exclude candidates for this or that reason. But now we want to include as many as we can. At our client intake we ask them how important a degree is to them and why it is necessary. If we can narrow down their search to the right skill set, we can work with that.” “Most of my business clients don’t require degrees of their job applicants, but they do ask for specific certifications, such as for a medical assistant,” says Ginny Kuhel of KuhelBreez HR Consulting in Fairfax. “My clients are small businesses, and many will say ‘we want such and such skill or equivalent experience.’ I never felt that you had to have a degree, and when I’m interviewing I’m not looking for degrees. I have a degree myself, but it’s not in HR. I’m self-taught in HR.” Pete Lawson, founder and principal at Inspire Talent in Novato, says that for the most part as he recruits tech talent for his clients, degrees are not deprioritized. “A degree doesn’t mean nothing, but as I’m searching for special skills a degree is not a top priority. But it is sometimes used to rationalize a decision to go with one job candidate or another. “Personally, with everything I’ve done in my career, I can’t say that my degree helped me get here at all. I was a theater major.” Brilliant and degree-less In a previous position where Lawson worked to hire engineers, everyone who applied was offered an interview. “It was a first assessment of their skills, and some of the best engineers we
22 NorthBaybiz
August 2024
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