Skills-Based Hiring Implementation and Legislation
This week, Governor Roy Cooper signed bipartisan legislation that shows all leaders in North Carolina are committed to removing degree requirements for hiring in state employee roles where skills and experience are a better measurement. This move comes less than a year after he announced an Executive Order in March of 2023 to begin changing public hiring practices in his state.
Skills-based hiring for public sector employment is a policy that both Republican and Democratic Governors have been implementing over the last three years. More than 18 states have now made this type of change with either an executive order or legislation. From Maryland to California, Ohio to Colorado, and recently Massachusetts, this trend is gaining momentum in states across the country. And by the end of 2023, Governors in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and Missouri all signed legislation that moves their states towards skills-based hiring.
It is imperative that states take legislative action to ensure the longevity of the shift towards skills-based hiring practices in their state. A simple gubernatorial policy shift or executive order will be hard to maintain, and successful implementation will ensure that qualified applicants fill necessary state roles in a timely manner.
The map below (as of January 2024) highlights states which have taken legislative action and shows which other states should follow suit and codify their practice.
It is also important that local leaders begin to implement this program in their jurisdiction. In her first week, Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker signed an executive order to remove degree requirements from specified roles. This ‘trickle-down effect’ is one of many next steps in broadening the reach and impact of this important initiative.
The shift towards skills-based hiring has become increasingly popular across both the public and private sectors. In North Carolina specifically, Walmart, one of the largest employers in the state, said they would be removing degree requirements from hundreds of corporate jobs.
Removing degree requirements for roles that do not require them has also been a federal policy since 2020, when President Trump signed Executive Order 13932 to remove unnecessary degree requirements from federal job postings. That work has continued under President Biden, and now, some 214 federal job categories are available for skilled workers without degrees. State agencies can and must follow suit. Moving towards skills-based hiring would help millions of qualified individuals gain meaningful employment and expand the states’ applicant pool for technical and middle skilled roles. This is needed to counter the degree inflation problem that both the private and public sectors have faced over the last two decades. Employers have increasingly used a college degree as a sorting tool to weed out candidates even though the degree has no reflection on the candidate’s skillset and relevance for the job. Now is the time to create permanent change that can help states recruit and retain better and more qualified individuals for their roles.
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