Employers

This short tool offers persuasive arguments that shows how youth apprenticeships benefit both young career seekers and businesses alike. For employers, it demonstrates how apprenticeships can fill labor gaps across industries, and act as a reliable source of nationally credentialed, ready-to-work job candidates. Youth are offered access to paid work-based training in high-growth fields and the significant earnings potential.

This playbook is a step-by-step guide to implementing more equitable and effective approaches to employee recruiting, hiring, and advancement by embracing skills-first talent management practices.

This resource includes a set of skills-based hiring toolkits that include a skills-based job-posting, interview questions, and onboarding plans. Each Skills-Based Hiring Toolkit is packed with valuable resources that will help you transform your hiring strategy.

In 2023, SHRM Foundation commissioned Topos Foundation to investigate the effectiveness of various framing, language, and argumentation deployed in an ongoing effort, by SHRM Foundation and many other partners, to promote hiring that puts less emphasis on academic degrees and considers all the ways job candidates may be qualified for a position. This report contains valuable insights into effectively communicating the case for skills-first hiring with the broadest audience.

The Success Index represents a private opinion survey of the American people’s personal definitions of success and the American Dream. It uses tools and methodologies that minimize distortions found in traditional public opinion polls to reveal not only what Americans prioritize most — and least — in a successful life, but also what they believe about other people’s priorities.

The Tear the Paper Ceiling: STARs Hiring Playbook gives human resource professionals, talent leaders, and hiring managers practical tools and guidance to shift their hiring to include STARs - workers Skilled Through Alternative Routes.

This report highlights the significant presence of Hispanic workers who are skilled through alternative routes (STARs) in the workforce and their overrepresentation in lower-wage occupations. It discusses the barriers these workers face due to degree requirements and suggests that employers prioritize skills over formal education to improve economic mobility for Hispanic STARs.

As employers seek to revitalize and diversify their talent pipelines, Opportunity@Work offers insights to inform employers’ understanding of where to find Black talent and the skills that Black STARs can bring to their talent pipelines. This report shares three key insights that every employer should know.

Opportunity@Work's report, Rise with the STARs: Building a Stronger Labor Market for STARs, Communities, and Employers, shows the impact of degree discrimination on employers and STARs and identifies a better path forward for everyone.