Unlocking Talent: The Career Professional’s Role in Influencing Skills-Based Hiring by Sean McGowan
- American Association for Employer Relations + (A+)
- Jan 8
- 7 min read
January 8, 2025
Sean McGowan, Carnegie Mellon University
As employers face increasing competition for talent, many continue to rely heavily on degree titles and specific majors to identify qualified applicants. By broadening their recruitment strategies to include candidates with related and relevant majors skill sets, employers can tap a wider, more diverse talent pool to reach their hiring goals and stoke innovation within their company. This article will explore how career services and employer relations professionals can use student data and insights to influence employers to adopt a skills-first approach.
At Carnegie Mellon University, Over the past five years, more than 50% of undergraduates who reported securing roles with "Software" in the title through our First Destination Survey (FDS) did not have a primary major in computer science.
As the Director of Employer Relations at one of the world's premier institutions for software, AI, and data, I frequently receive inquiries about our computer science students. Ranked #2 in the nation for undergraduate computer science by U.S. News & World Report, these students are undoubtedly exceptional. However, with only about 280 computer science undergraduates graduating annually, employers face stiff competition for this highly sought-after talent.
This limited supply presents challenges for employers unable or unwilling to expand their target pool of majors. When hiring goals are not met, some refrain from returning, a scenario detrimental to our students and the employer relationships we’ve cultivated. This is why employer relations professionals must guide their partners to focus on relevant skill sets rather than limiting their outreach to specific majors. This involves expanding an employer’s focus.
Expanding Focus to Enhance Quality, Not Quantity
Some employers express concern about the volume of applications they currently receive, often citing an overload of unqualified candidates. In these scenarios, it’s not about increasing the number of applicants but rather improving the caliber of those applying. Expanding the focus to include a broader range of majors and skill sets can enhance the quality of qualified candidates, aligning the applicant pool more closely with the specific competencies required for the role.
Defining quality in recruitment is about aligning the pool of talent with the precise skills, experiences, and attributes an employer actually wants versus the preferred qualifications and major requirements you may see on a generic job requisition. In my experience working in staffing, the most valuable conversations occurred during the role qualification stage with employers. A question such as, “What are the three must haves?” Simple questions like this helped me challenge the generic job description to dive deeper into what baseline skill sets or proficiencies the person would need to possess for the role, regardless of academic background. For example, a baseline must-have for a consulting role could be human behavior and decision-making process. If the employer is only stuck on business majors, they would miss out on our social and decision science majors located in our College of Humanities and Social Sciences. These students have the baseline must-haves due to their ability to combine intellectual ideals with the realities of human and organizational behavior.
Reducing bias in candidate selection is a desire of many of the organizations we work with and employers who narrowly focus on specific majors can unintentionally remove students who have gained related skill sets through alternative learning pathways such as minors, electives, externships, and clubs, including non-traditional pathways such as boot camps and certifications.
In summary, expanding focus to enhance quality means helping employers broaden their definition and understanding of what “qualified’ means, as well as digging into the must-haves of these roles in a holistic way. This process and shift won’t dilute the pool of applicants but instead, sharpen it to provide greater access to skilled and diverse candidates. These folks will have the technical must-haves but also challenge the current perspectives of teams to offer more innovative products and services.
Expanding the focus to prioritize skills over specific majors challenges the long-standing tradition of credentialism in hiring, which is a practice rooted in the post-World War II era that shaped the modern workforce by tying roles to specific degrees and academic credentials. To understand how this mindset evolved, we need to explore the historical rise of major-specific hiring and its impact on today’s recruitment practices.
Credentialism and the Rise of Major-Specific Hiring
If you’re a graduate of a student affairs or higher education program, you’ve likely encountered John R. Thelin’s A History of American Higher Education. In it, Thelin explains how the GI Bill expanded access to higher education post-World War II, leading to a growing population of credentialed workers. Employers began mandating degrees as a rite of passage, where previously they had relied more on potential and teachability.
Over time, this focus on credentials evolved into major-specific hiring practices, with employers requiring degrees tied to specialized roles. While this trend standardized qualifications, it also narrowed the pool of candidates for many roles.
As career services professionals, we must balance our efforts between helping students identify potential career paths and educating employers on the transferable skills students bring, regardless of their major. For instance, at CMU, our Master of Integrated Innovation for Products & Services (MIIPS) program prepares students from backgrounds in design, engineering, or business for careers in product management. Without clear communication, employers might overlook these graduates based on a long major name.
While credentialism has historically shaped hiring practices by emphasizing degrees and specific majors, the concept of skill-based hiring has been quietly challenging this paradigm for over a century. Today, however, skill-based hiring is gaining renewed attention as employers seek innovative ways to address talent shortages and adapt to evolving workforce needs.
Skill-Based Hiring Is Not New, But It’s Gaining Attention
While skill-based hiring has made headlines in the past decade, it’s not a new concept. Pre-employment assessments were used as early as World War I, with tools like personality and cognitive tests adapted by the private sector in the 1930s. These foundations paved the way for modern assessments like HackerRank and Pymetrics and experiential platforms/simulations like Forage and AmplifyMe.
IBM’s New Collar Program is a standout example of an employer prioritizing skills over degrees. By removing degree requirements for select roles, IBM has opened doors for non-traditional talent, broadening access to diverse candidates. Additionally, the company invests in upskilling initiatives, fostering the development of future leaders, and ensuring employees are equipped with the skills needed to thrive in their roles.
Despite progress, findings from sources like Harvard Business Review show employers still face hurdles in fully adopting skill-based hiring. At CMU, we’ve taken steps to help employers focus on skills, asking questions about their hiring processes, including technical and behavioral assessments. Many employers cite core human skills like communication and problem-solving as priorities. This allows us to challenge their major-specific targeting by showcasing students from other programs who meet these skill requirements. This process can begin by leveraging our relationships with employers, starting with a conversation.
Leveraging Employer Relations to Expand the Talent Funnel
Donald Miller’s Building a StoryBrand inspired me to rethink my role in employer relations. As career services professionals, we’re the guides to employers’ main characters, helping them overcome obstacles and achieve success (Obi Wan vs. Luke Skywalker). By identifying employers’ pain points and aligning our student talent with their goals, we can influence workforce strategies.
At CMU, we developed buyer personas to better understand our primary audience: university recruiters. Knowing their KPIs like time-to-fill, quality of hire, offer acceptance rates, and diversity metrics helps us provide targeted solutions. For instance, when employers asked for data on students entering specific roles, we created a new dashboard showcasing these insights, leveraging tools like Tableau. This resource offers employers a visual, for example, that students in design roles come from programs beyond just the design major, such as human-computer interaction or fine arts.
*You can create your own buyer personas with Hubspot for free!
Conclusion and Call to Action
While we can’t force employers to adopt skill-based hiring, we can influence them by providing actionable data and insights. By shifting the focus from degrees to skills, we unlock opportunities for more students, improve the quality of hires, and strengthen employer relationships.
The stakes are high! In today’s rapidly evolving job market, competition for top talent is fierce, and the need for innovation has never been greater. Employers who fail to adapt risk being left behind, while those who embrace skills-based hiring will build stronger, more diverse teams equipped to drive success in the future of work.
As career services professionals, our role is to guide employers toward these forward-thinking practices. By analyzing data, understanding employer pain points, and showcasing the transferable skills of our students, we can drive meaningful change in how talent is identified and developed.
3 Tips and Takeaways:
1. Collaborate with Employers to Define Key Skills: Start conversations with employers to identify the core skills necessary for their roles. Challenge them to go beyond generic job descriptions by asking, “What are the three must-haves for this role?” Use this dialogue to highlight how students from diverse academic programs may align with these essential skill sets.
2. Leverage Data to Tell a Compelling Story: Use first destination survey data and other analytics to demonstrate how students from varied majors successfully transition into employers’ roles. Providing data-driven dashboards or visual tools can help employers see the broader range of candidates who meet their needs, breaking down major-specific biases.
3. Position Yourself as a Guide for Employers: Embrace the role of a consultant by understanding employer pain points and their hiring metrics, such as time-to-fill and diversity goals. Offer tailored solutions, like showcasing candidates’ transferable skills, sharing relevant program insights, and connecting them with non-traditional pipelines to meet their workforce needs.
About the Author
Sean McGowan serves as the Director of Employer Relations at Carnegie Mellon University’s Career & Professional Development Center. His leadership has been pivotal in enhancing the employer experience through a consultative strategy and embracing a campus-wide synergy regarding employer relations. Recently returning to CMU post-pandemic, Sean has focused on uncovering the pain points of early talent acquisition professionals and understanding the high-value services a career center needs to provide in a post-COVID world. Sean holds a MA in Student Affairs and Higher Education from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Citations:
Thelin-A History of American Higher Education
Donald Miller-Building a StoryBrand
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