Future of Work: The way companies qualify job candidates is outdated
Noorjit Sidhu, future of work investor at Plug & Play, reached out after seeing my LinkedIn post about joining Catalyte and how reskilling ties to my parents’ immigration story. He wanted to connect over the future of work. We jumped on a fun phone call and Noorjit followed-up with a list of questions for me. Being the (proud) nerd I am, I’m excited to write up my answers and share them with you in a Future of Work Series. Enjoy and let me know what you think!
It’s great that skills are becoming more fluid in how they’re valued and where they’re developed. But we still have employers looking at traditional qualifications (e.g., college degrees) as evidence of specific skills. What are your thoughts on the topic?
If an individual (regardless of degrees or pedigree) can get the job done in any professional field, my opinion is that no employer 4-year degree requirement should present barriers for that individual to be hired and put to work. Today, that’s just not the case. It irks me because it’s a waste that’s produced by the old-school meritocracy philosophy.
We’re leaving great talent on the table when we sorely need it. Did you know that the number of job openings (7.5 million) in the U.S. now far exceeds the number of unemployed (6 million)? The silver lining is the most progressive companies are catching on and doing something about it. Google, Apple, IBM, Bank of America, Lowes, Nordstroms, Starbucks, and Costco, among others, no longer require employees to have a college degree. That’s the way of the future of work.
I predict that people analytics and big data will be prioritized and that pre-hire testing and assessments will become a new normal. We’re already starting to see a trend in talent data analytics. A study from Northeastern University found that, while only 17% of employers consider their current process of setting qualifications for jobs to be “rigorous and data-driven,” 41% of employers are starting to use data analytics in their recruiting efforts.
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About Lolita Taub
Lolita Taub is the chief of staff at Catalyte, a TEDx speaker and an AI enthusiast, with a venture capital and enterprise tech background. She is a Venture Partner at NexGen, an LP at Portfolia’s Enterprise Fund and a former VC at Backstage Capital and K Fund. Lolita holds nearly a decade of enterprise B2B software, hardware and services sales experience at IBM, Cisco Systems and in Silicon Valley. She has a BA from the University of Southern California and an MBA from the IE Business School. Lolita has been recognized for her work on Forbes, Inc.com, The Huffington Post and Entrepreneur.com among other publications.
