Skills-first Hiring Guide Aims to Help Employers Hire, Promote Workers Based on Skill

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) published a guide designed to educate employers about the benefits of using skills-first hiring practices and encourage them to use those practices to build a more qualified workforce.

The Good Jobs Initiative’s Skills-First Hiring Starter Kit was announced at the White House’s Classroom to Career Summit, where President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden welcomed nearly 300 education and workforce leaders to announce new actions on workforce, career, and technical education. The Skills-First Hiring Starter Kit, developed in partnership with the U.S. Department of Commerce, is a short guide to hiring, promotion, and management built around worker skills, rather than relying on degree qualifications.

“Skills-first hiring practices can be a way of helping workers get ahead through good jobs,” said Julie Su, the DOL’s acting secretary. “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.”

Skills-first hiring—also known as “skills-based hiring”—refers to the hiring or promotion of workers around demonstratable skills, knowledge, and abilities, regardless of how or where workers attained those skills. The department’s Good Jobs Principles promote skills-based hiring as a quality recruitment practice.

While many employers have removed four-year degree requirements for salaried jobs, employers still struggle to implement skills-first hiring strategies after ending those requirements. The Starter Kit aims to give private employers more information on skills-based hiring so that they can successfully implement these practices in the workplace.