Skills Based Hiring: Removing Barriers and Paving Pathways to an Inclusive Workforce

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Chair Charlotte A. Burrows and Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) Director Jenny R. Yang will host a livestream roundtable discussion, Skills Based Hiring: Removing Barriers and Paving Pathways to an Inclusive Workforce, to examine how skills-based hiring can promote equal employment opportunity in the workplace. The skills-based hiring approach focuses on practical skills and performance, rather than degree requirements or formal qualifications. As the United States Office of Personnel Management recently observed, “[s]kills-based hiring helps hiring managers focus on what candidates know how to do, not where they learned it. It values all relevant skills for the role at hand, whether they are learned in the classroom, on the job, or on one’s own.”

This roundtable will explore how employers have integrated skills-based hiring into their employment practices and how it has helped them remove barriers to hire and retain workers. We will hear key findings about the approach and how employers have used skills-based hiring to identify talented workers from diverse backgrounds. In addition, we will delve into the practical and legal questions that arise when adopting a skills-based hiring approach.

WHO:

• Charlotte A. Burrows, Chair, EEOC
• Jenny R. Yang, Director, OFCCP
• Maurice Jones, Chief Executive Officer, OneTen 
• Byron Auguste, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Opportunity@Work  
• Laura Maristany, VP, External Affairs, Bitwise Industries
• Emily M. Dickens, Chief of Staff, Government Affairs, and Corporate Secretary, Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM)