Challenge: The opportunity divide

- I want to take a few minutes to outline a challenge that many of us intuitively know about but might struggle to define or describe in detail. It's called the opportunity divide, and it impacts billions of people around the world every day. Now, you see on one side of the divide are the billions of adults around the world who don't have a university degree, are likely from low income and marginalized backgrounds, and have the skills and ambition to do excellent work and build fulfilling careers. On the other side of the divide are employers who for the most part hold the keys to economic opportunity and often have roles that they struggle to fill. Now, there are lots of systemic barriers that keep this divide in place. I mean, we can spend hours talking about some of these, right? Including inequitable school funding, a lack of access to healthcare, a lack of affordable housing, unnecessary language requirements, inequitable outcomes in the justice system, and so on and so on, but these are for another discussion and perhaps for another course. Now, I know that you as an employer can't solve every factor that contributes to the opportunity divide, but you do hold tremendous power to build more equitable communities by rethinking your employment practices. For example, traditional talent acquisition all around the world often means requiring formal university degrees, even for roles that don't actually need them. All over the world, degrees are typically used, alone, mind you, as proxies for skills, professionalism, or basic competence. This phenomenon is commonly referred to as degree inflation and it prevents large numbers of people who may lack the degree but have the skills, professionalism, and competence to succeed and access economic stability. This also prevent employers from tapping in to the full range of talent available to help their businesses thrive when they are only looking at degrees. When companies require a formal degree, they just make roles harder to fill, because in America, for example, the US Census reports that the majority of adults simply do not have a university degree. 60% of white people, 75% of Black people and 80% of Latino people don't have a college degree, and as people move internationally to seek opportunities, even when they have a university degree that degree is not often recognized due to a lack of standardization across foreign education systems and job markets. And so moving from credential-based hiring to skills-based hiring is a tangible way that businesses can take a leading role in reducing the size of the opportunity divide, and in the process also becoming stronger organizations. Because when they take time to clearly define the skills needed for a particular role and use new approaches to identify excellent candidates with those skills, instead of just using a degree as a proxy, businesses actually become more efficient, more agile, and more inclusive. I know the opportunity divide is a challenge that feels daunting, but by taking a skills first approach, I do believe the private sector has a clear and powerful opportunity to address it.