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Skillful Talent Series Workshop Information

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Skillful Talent Series Workshop Information

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These workshops are free interactive learning opportunities to understand skills-based hiring practices including updating job postings and candidate evaluation processes.

For more information on skills-based talent strategy and upcoming workshops, visit https://www.workforceindiana.org/skills-based-talent-strategy/

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Skills-Based Talent Strategy Find Talent. Improve Retention. Fill Jobs Faster. For decades employers have been struggling to find talent, keeping open jobs left unfilled and losing money. The Indiana Chamber’s 16th annual statewide employer survey released in October 2023 stated that 74% of employers view meeting their talent needs as a

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Ready to engage your team and begin transitioning your hiring practices to be skills-based?

The Employer Skills-Based Hiring Accelerator program is designed to help employers: fill job openings, hire quality employees, build a diverse and talented workforce, and improve employee retention through:

1. Skills-based hiring content knowledge and processes

2. Structured coaching sessions

3. Forum events and peer-to-peer learning

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The Activator Training is intended for those who are helping employers understand and adopt skills-based practices. The free training includes:

--Three, 3-hour hands on trainings with a community of practitioners

--Two hours of online self-paced learning on skills-based hiring content knowledge

For more information, contact:

•Natalie Wenzler, Director of Partnerships and Programs for the Institute for Workforce Excellence at  nwenzler@indianachamber.com

•Schedule a meeting for further discussion

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Fill out this interest form for more information!

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Fill out this interest form for more information!

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Taking a Skills-Based Approach Information Interest Form

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October 29, 2025: Attract the Right Talent Virtual Workshop (STS 101)

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October 29, 2025: Attract the Right Talent Virtual Workshop (STS 101)

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In Attract the Right Talent facilitated by the Institute for Workforce Excellence, you'll learn to:

Focus your job posting on the skills candidates need

Broaden your talent pools to all qualified applicants

Source and recruit the right talent you're struggling to find

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Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: Attract the Right Talent: Skillful Talent Series 101 hosted by the Institute for Workforce Excellence. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the meeting.

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Do you struggle to find the talent your company needs to grow? Outdated hiring and recruitment methods may be keeping you from finding the skilled workforce you need to succeed. In Attract the Right Talent, an engaging and interactive workshop provided by Jobs for the Future (JFF) and facilitated by the Institute for Workforce Excellence, you’ll learn: --Focus your job posting on the skills candidates need
--Broaden your talent pools to all qualified applicants
--Source and recruit the right talent you’re struggling to find Future-proof your workforce by focusing on skills in your talent management process. By concentrating on competencies, you can hire better candidates, speed up your time-to-hire, and increase employee retention and engagement.

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Skills-Based Hiring: The Long Road from Pronouncements to Practice 

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Skills-Based Hiring Report from Burning Glass Institute

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Skills-Based Hiring Report from Burning Glass Institute

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While headlines trumpet the demise of the college degree, our joint report with Harvard Business School Project on Managing the Future of Work reveals a different reality. Many companies have announced dropping degree requirements, but sustained hiring changes remain elusive for most. This report identifies where the reality of Skills-Based Hiring is lagging well-meaning ambitions, and shows which companies are getting it right.

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Skills-Based Hiring: The Long Road from Pronouncements to Practice - The Burning Glass Institute

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For many employers in recent decades, adding college degree requirements seemed an efficient filter. More proxy than direct measure, degrees were perceived as indicators of persistence, of foundational skill, and of general capability. For hiring managers who themselves had traveled that cursus hono

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Companies that ditch degree requirements in favor of skills-based hiring could see an explosion of talent with 19x the workers

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Companies that ditch degree requirements in favor of skills-based hiring could see an explosion of talent with 19x the workers

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Few Americans actually do the exact job they went to school for. Or even utilize the same skills as their last gig.

More from Fortune: 5 side hustles where you may earn over $20,000 per year-all while working from home Looking to make extra cash? This CD has a 5.15% APY right now Buying a house? Here's how much to save This is how much money you need to earn annually to comfortably buy a $600,000 home

Instead, many learn on the job or pick up abilities they may need through continuing education. Yet that gap between workers' ability to do the work and their eligibility on paper means that many traditional recruiting methods are ineffective and often exclude large swaths of the population.

About 88% of employers admitted in a 2022 survey they were likely filtering out highly skilled candidates because they lacked credentials such as a degree or specific title. But employers that look beyond specific requirements-like a degree or positions held at blue-chip companies-may be able to significantly expand their reach.

A new analysis from LinkedIn finds that wide adoption of a skills-based hiring approach could help get significantly more U.S. workers into a wider range of roles-up to 19 times more. And much of that expansion may bring more diverse workers, with women and young adults benefiting the most from this hiring strategy.

"Employers have long relied on proxies like education or years of experience in a given role to signal that a candidate was capable of performing a job. Now we are seeing more weight being put on having the right skills," says Rand Ghayad, head of economics and global labor markets at LinkedIn.

A skills-based hiring approach could also help industries that are still struggling to fill open roles. In fact, LinkedIn recently noted that sectors such as accommodation, oil and gas, and manufacturing, as well as hospitals and health care, are still facing staffing shortfalls in comparison to pre-pandemic levels.

The viability of this type of hiring approach does vary by industry. Among the sectors that could benefit the most are education, consumer services, retail, and administrative and support services.

It's helpful considering that it isn't likely that the U.S. will experience a sudden influx of workers. Labor force participation rates are within normal levels following the pandemic fallout, while birth rates have been on a steady decline and U.S. immigration policies are fairly prohibitive -without much sign of significant change ahead.

Some companies are already prioritizing skills over degrees

At some places, the degrees-to-skills shift is already underway. Within the past year, a little less than half (45%) of employers using LinkedIn for recruiting explicitly used skills data to fill open roles, up 12% from a year prior. Additionally, 19% of U.S. job postings no longer have degree requirements, up from 15% in 2021, according to LinkedIn. Looking ahead, 75% of recruiters surveyed by LinkedIn reported they expected skills-first hiring would be a priority for their company within the next 18 months.

In recent years, even Fortune 500 companies like Accenture, Apple, EY, Google, and Microsoft have tested skills-based approaches for various roles. Only 26% of Accenture's software QA engineer postings, for example, specify a degree requirement, according to 2022 research by Harvard Business Review and Emsi Burning Glass.

This approach will continue to pay dividends even as slack returns to the labor market, Ghayad tells Fortune. "Skills will count more and more when there is slack in the labor market," he says, adding the data is already showing an uptick in job seekers returning to the labor market, as well as a rise in the intensity of their search.

"When this happens, employers usually look for more signals when making hiring decisions," Ghayad explains, noting preliminary research shows that now that employers are seeing more people applying to jobs, they are prioritizing those who have more skills.

"The bottom line is that the value of skills isn't going away anytime soon. If anything, we are seeing that employers are putting more weight on it when faced with larger pools of applicants," he says.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
More from Fortune:
5 side hustles where you may earn over $20,000 per year-all while working from home
Looking to make extra cash? This CD has a 5.15% APY right now
Buying a house? Here's how much to save
This is how much money you need to earn annually to comfortably buy a $600,000 home

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Companies that ditch degree requirements in favor of skills-based hiring could see an explosion of talent with 19x the workers

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Employers who adopt a skills-based hiring approach could help get significantly more U.S. workers into a wider range of roles.

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Skills-Based Hiring Is Just The Beginning

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Skills-Based Hiring Is Just The Beginning

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From sourcing and recruiting, to retention and advancement, here is how the savviest employers are taking a skills-based approach to every step of the talent journey.

HR leaders interviewing a candidate based on their skills and not degrees
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More and more employers are recognizing the benefits of skills-based hiring these days. A skills-based approach emphasizes a person's skills rather than degrees as the most important determinant of job success. This approach enables employers to equitably assess diverse experiences and hire qualified candidates from historically overlooked sources and backgrounds.

Research shows that selecting candidates based on skills can lead to better job outcomes than relying on degree attainment. At the same time, switching to a focus on skills does not invalidate degrees; it simply recognizes that some people have obtained certain skills through degrees and others have done so through work experience alone.

While skills-based hiring can increase the number of nontraditional candidates who get their foot in the door, a skills-based approach to talent management shouldn't end there. In fact, skills-based hiring is just one piece of fostering a larger skills-based culture. Here's how companies can advance that culture and reap rewards throughout the talent journey.
Recruiting & Sourcing
To find skilled talent without four-year degrees and signal that your organization is committed to skills-based hiring, try these three tactics:

1. Remove degree requirements from public job descriptions. Amazingly, this one can get overlooked as many hiring managers copy and paste previous job descriptions. Make sure you're using new skills-based job descriptions that don't reference degrees or years of experience. This step may be more feasible than you think; Grads of Life worked with one Connecticut-based company that was able to remove degree requirements for 90% of its open jobs.

2. Adjust language on the recruiting landing page and advertise skills-based job descriptions. Make it clear on your website that your organization encourages nondegreed candidates to apply to roles that match their skills.

3. Expand sourcing channels. Identify community-based organizations, community colleges, and training organizations in your target geographies that have preexisting programs that support your talent needs. You should also carefully vet your open roles to determine which are well-suited for a talent pipeline program.

Hiring
Once you are past the talent identification stage, consider these practical steps to embed greater equity into your hiring efforts:

1. Map out the skills needed the first day on the job. Be sure to distinguish these skills from skills that can be learned, with time and/or upskilling, while on the job. Use these different categories of skills to assess candidate readiness.

2. Ensure you have diverse interviewing teams. This can help mitigate bias in the hiring process and bring much-needed perspective to candidate assessments.

3. Create skills-based interview rubrics and coach interviewers on how to use them. Grads of Life recently partnered with medical technology company Stryker to identify the priority skills for two in-demand roles within the organization. This engagement included creating new job descriptions, interview guides and rubrics to support skills-based candidate assessments and hiring. Stryker is taking a measured and deliberate approach to scaling this work across additional parts of their business. A skills-based hiring approach is just one way the company is demonstrating their commitment to removing potential barriers for talent.

Advancement & Retention
The foundational work that goes into adopting skills-based hiring can be repurposed to address another critical part of the talent journey: advancement and retention. With 94% of entry-level employees saying they are more likely to stay if a company invests in their career, a skills-based approach to upskilling and advancement can reap big rewards. It all starts with revisiting the skills map you created for a role during the skills-based hiring process. This skills map lays out the key skills required for success in a particular role. You can use a role's skills map to:

1. Develop skills-based performance rubrics. Having clear criteria for skill acquisition and mastery in a role can make performance reviews and pathways to advancement more equitable.

2. Identify upskilling needs. Pinpoint specific skills where an employee needs additional training to both succeed in their current role and be ready to advance to the next level.

3. Develop or buy trainings targeting specific skills. Whenever significant new skills are needed for career transitions, consider developing formal upskilling programs.

Using a skills-based approach to upskilling and performance management can increase transparency and consistency in the talent management process, as well as boost confidence in its fairness.
Promoting a Skills-Based Culture
Ultimately, culture change starts with leadership at multiple levels. Enroll executive champions who can speak to the benefits of a skills-based culture, identify business leaders with influence in the organization/business line, and identify additional operational champions at each phase of the talent journey who can remove roadblocks and boost buy-in.

From there, address cultural resistance, particularly among hiring managers. As gatekeepers for hiring and advancement, hiring managers and other key stakeholders need to be brought on board and understand the benefits of the changes, as well as new tools and processes.

Finally, allocate a sufficient budget. Properly funding skills-based practice implementation affirms its value to the workforce. Set aside dedicated funding for external sourcing and training partners, manager training, and recredentialing support. By making this investment upfront, you can unlock the untapped potential of the labor market and realize greater economic equity for the communities in which you operate.

Grads of Life is here to help when you are ready to join the skills-first movement.

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Grads of Life BrandVoice: Skills-Based Hiring Is Just The Beginning

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From sourcing and recruiting, to retention and advancement, here is how the savviest employers are taking a skills-based approach to every step of the talent journey.

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Skills-Based Sourcing and Hiring Playbook

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Skills-Based Sourcing and Hiring Playbook

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Skills-Based Hiring Is The Future—Where Do Degree-Obsessed Millennials Fit In?

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Skills-Based Hiring Is The Future—Where Do Degree-Obsessed Millennials Fit In?

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Close up of creative business colleagues listening to an informal presentation in a meeting room
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Jasmine Walker, 30, earned a bachelor's degree from Emory University and shortly after, a master's from Johns Hopkins University in public health. She studied hard, learned the theory and landed a job at the prestigious University of Chicago as an infection control lead in October 2020, a crucial role at the time since the COVID-19 pandemic was at its height. But less than three years later, the vaccine had flattened the infection curve and her position was phased out.

Jasmine Walker is the founder of More Than A Minority, an equity advocacy organization based in ... [+]
Jasmine Walker

Despite being a dual degree-holder from two prestigious institutions and possessing years of practical experience, Walker is still on the lookout for a fitting full-time senior role in the non-profit or public health sector nearly a year after being laid off. She's since learned that her higher education isn't entirely enough. Skills are what employers are looking for.

"Even with my degrees, I felt the additional certification was needed," Walker told me, explaining she'd obtained marketing and conscious leadership management certificates recently. A self-proclaimed overachiever, Walker realized that the hard and soft skills the programs taught her were critical in helping her stand out from the crowd while on her job search.

Many millennials like her were taught as teens that college was the golden ticket to career success, and largely one of the only bastions to job security. Between 1970 and 2010, the rate of college aged adults (18-24) had risen by about 40% per a report from Online U, a higher education resource for prospective students. The platform suggests this uptick was caused by Baby Boomer/Gen X parents urging their Millennial children to attend college for a better future than their own. As of late though, trust in higher education has waned, especially as more states continue to consider the elimination of degree requirements. Not to mention technology, namely AI is aggressively shifting the way the future of work looks, leaving late twenty and thirty-somethings searching for a new path forward to not only get ahead, but to merely keep up.

"Up-skilling is incredibly important now more than ever, especially for vulnerable groups in our workforce like young adults, women and people of color," Scarlett Howery, Vice President, Public Workforce Solutions at DeVry University told me.

Up-skilling refers to training programs and other development options to minimize skill gaps in the workplace. According to recent data from the school, there are significant gaps in up-skilling opportunities for women and POC - adding to the already stacked barriers to progress for the groups.

She adds: "There has been a clear disconnect between employers and employees in general when it comes to expectations for skills development in the workplace," and that leads to the widening of the pervasive racial wealth gap. Per data from Brookings, the institute says that for every $100 in wealth held by white households, Black households held only $15.

Cori Murray, veteran journalist, entrepreneur and mentor to many Millennial creatives told me that she herself learned the hard way how not up-skilling can affect financial viability.

"The fight to stay professionally valuable is something I've had to reimagine in recent years and I've shared what I've learned along the way to younger generations who are a bit frustrated with where they are," Murray told me.

She recently shared some of her cross-generational advice as a part of a multi-part digital series entitled With The Bag To Match put on by LeBron James and Maverick Carter-founded SpringHill Company in partnership with J.P. Morgan.

"Don't get too comfortable in your career, or your current place of employment," Murray told me. "Figure out how you can make yourself an asset anywhere you go, not just at the place you're currently employed because that's how you can paint yourself in a corner, vocationally and financially."

She's on to something.

Workers who complete an up-skilling program take in an average of $8,000 more than their peers who don't have the same certifications, which is about an 8.6 percent increase, according to 2021 Gallup data.

And up-skilling doesn't just benefit employees. Employers also have the potential to save thousands in rehiring costs if they invest in their current team, and focus on retention efforts.

For Walker and other Millennials like her who are on the job market, she knows her efforts are not only well worth it, but necessary to keep up in a quickly evolving workforce that are looking brighter, faster and stronger entrants all the time. She offers some insight to young careerists who may not see the benefit of shoring up extra skills outside of their current roles.

"Up-skilling isn't about prestige or over-achieving. It's about understanding the people around me better, being a better business owner and becoming a stronger leader, which puts me in position to strengthen my professional viability. Most importantly, it's teaching me how to be a better human."
This article was edited for clarity and brevity.

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Skills-Based Hiring Is The Future-Where Do Degree-Obsessed Millennials Fit In?

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Jasmine Walker, 30, earned a bachelor's degree from Emory University and shortly after, a master's from Johns Hopkins University in public health.

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November 4, 2025: Candidate Evaluation Virtual Workshop (STS 102)

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November 4, 2025: Candidate Evaluation Virtual Workshop (STS 102)

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Monthly workshop facilitated building upon the first workshop of Attract the Right Talent.

In Candidate Evaluation facilitated by the Institute for Workforce Excellence, you'll learn how to:

Avoid losing qualified talent in the screening process

Craft interview questions to assess candidates' occupational and foundational skills

Select and design assessments to evaluate candidates' skills

A registration link and dates for this workshop are shared upon completion of the Attract the Right Talent virtual workshop.

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Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: Candidate Evaluation: Skillful Talent Series Workshop 102 hosted by the Institute for Workforce Excellence. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the meeting.

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By emphasizing candidate’s skills in the interview and using skill assessments that test for specific competencies new employees will need to succeed in their role, you’ll be able to double the effectiveness of your interview process and choose the candidate most likely to succeed. In Candidate Evaluation, an engaging and interactive workshop provided by Jobs for the Future (JFF) and facilitated by the Institute for Workforce Excellence, you’ll learn how to:
-- Avoid losing qualified talent in the screening process
-- Craft interview questions to assess candidates’ occupational and foundational skills
-- Select and design assessments to evaluate candidates’ skills By evaluating candidates based on their skills, you distill the interviewing and evaluation processes to its essentials and are more likely to find and select your next great employee. Note: this workshop builds upon the knowledge learned in Attracting the Right Talent: Skillful Talent Series 101 workshop and is required to be completed before signing up for this workshop on Candidate Evaluation.

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Instructions to create an free e-learning account with skills-based hiring and development modules:

1. Go to raatraining.jff.org

2. Click on “Create new account” in the center area of the web page

3. Accept the Terms of Service

4. Create a username and enter your contact information

5. Enter this Affiliate Code in the last information box: EINChamber23

6. Confirm your registration via email

7. Email nwenzler@indianachamber.com with any questions or concerns

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For full access to courses, you’ll need to take a minute to create a new account. To create your account, you’ll need an enrollment code or have confirmation from your organization’s enrollment in this training program.

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Fill out this interest form for general updates on skills-based hiring and tailored resources shared with you!

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Fill out this interest form for general updates on skills-based hiring and tailored resources shared with you!

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Taking a Skills-Based Approach Information Interest Form

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We equip employers with the tools and training to assess applicants' full skills, including and beyond those from traditional education.