Bain & Company, OneTen and Grads of Life have co-published a new brief upholding skills-based hiring as a key driver of equity in employment and illustrating its impact at pharmaceutical company Merck.
Grads of Life’s “Dismissed by Degrees” research continues to echo across the U.S. business landscape. Increasingly, employers are recognizing how overreliance on four-year college degrees has exacerbated occupational segregation and locked out the very candidates businesses might benefit most from. Black Americans are one of the groups who have been disproportionately impacted by unnecessary four-year degree requirements and cut off from access to critical, family-sustaining careers. Now, to effectively recruit, develop and advance them, companies are rethinking degree requirements and prioritizing skills-based hiring.
All signs point to the staying power of the skills-based hiring movement. Amid the momentum, Bain & Company, OneTen and Grads of Life have released a new brief that affirms the business and justice case for taking a skills-first approach to hiring and outlines its potential to improve economic opportunity and mobility for Black talent. The piece also offers a powerful model for skills-based hiring implementation: pharmaceutical company Merck.
