Build, Don’t Buy

Major companies say they’re moving beyond “just-in-time” hiring and investing more in training, as urgency about the labor market drives new thinking. Also, a workforce boost from moving a community college to a university campus, and an essay about why there’s no one-size-fits-all answer on how skills-first hiring affects the bottom line. (Subscribe here.)

Moving Past Just-In-Time Hiring

Skills-first hiring has been the talk of the workforce world for years. And for just about as many years, the push has been dogged by questions of whether it’s just talk.

A new report from the Learning Society, a collaborative effort led out of Stanford University’s Center on Longevity, won’t settle that debate. But it sheds light on how 15 global firms with major U.S. operations are thinking about hiring and skill development as AI adoption accelerates.

At those companies, at least, strategy and practices are changing. Employers have long relied on “just-in-time talent” for hiring needs, finding workers on the open market who were already trained—and often had degrees. But the labor force is now shrinking relative to the population. And that shift is combining with the new demands of AI to force many companies to reconsider how they hire and develop workers, says Eva Sage-Gavin, a co-author of the report and a former top HR executive at companies including Accenture, Gap Inc., and Disney Consumer Products.

“I can buy tech. I can use AI. But it’s the talent I have and how talent and technology interact that’s going to find my way to growth and competitiveness,” Sage-Gavin says.

The findings are based on interviews with 15 human resources executives at large companies, which range in size from Hubbell, an electric and utility product manufacturer with about 17K employees, to Walmart, with more than 2M employees. The executives were asked about four major topics, including the impact of AI and their approaches to skill building.

Skills First: One of the report’s key findings is that the meaning and relevance of the four-year degree is changing as the pace of technological change increases. “A college degree is a measure of aptitude. It’s not necessarily a measure of success in a team-focused environment,” John Russell, chief technology officer at Dominion Energy, told the report authors. 

Many companies named in the report say they are investing more heavily in their own training of entry-level workers. Hubbell has restructured its internship program to rotate interns every year for three years, so they’re essentially trained by the company and ready for a full-time role upon completion. They’ve even developed a high school program to gain interest from prospective employees earlier—a strategy that a third of the companies interviewed were using. 

The Learning Society emphasizes the role of higher education in the future of work, but believes colleges need to be more adaptable to learners’ needs at different stages of their careers. The new report also stresses that college degrees should be a shared investment between the worker and their employer. 

It calls out some partnerships between employers and higher education as examples, including one between Wichita State University’s business school and Koch, Inc. that created a microcredential pathway for adults without degrees.

“Higher education needs to shift as quickly as employers are,” Sage-Gavin says.

The AI Race and Durable Skills: AI is reshaping the companies’ hiring practices, but not necessarily in the ways many people assume. The interviewees all said that AI is not eliminating jobs. Instead, the technology is taking over parts of jobs, including some of the technical work that has dominated the hiring landscape in recent years.

Susan Youngblood, a former chief HR officer and a consultant on AI and the future of the workforce, says that’s led to a resurgence in demand for the soft, or durable, skills traditionally taught through the liberal arts. AI literacy and skills like communication and conflict mitigation are top skills employers are searching for, according to LinkedIn data.

Despite the fear many veteran workers may have about AI making their hard-earned skills obsolete, Youngblood says mid- to late-career workers actually have an edge: They are more likely to know when AI is hallucinating. But keeping up with the pace of change is crucial for workers of all ages.

Some of the most effective training happens informally, Youngblood says, when someone at a company experiments on their own and shares what they found at a department meeting. Companies also offer formal training through small groups in person, online, and even at events like hackathons.

“Every single employee has the option and the availability of that training,” Youngblood says, and “there are definitely companies who have made it pretty compelling to do it.”

Kroger, for example, has created an “AI license” for all the different roles in its company, giving employees from cashiers to data scientists the training and guidance they need to apply AI in their specific work.

The Kicker: “Just like with a driver’s license, you wouldn’t just hand the keys to somebody and say, ‘Hey, good luck,’” says Tim Massa, EVP and chief people officer at Kroger. —By Colleen Connolly

Strength Through Co-Location

Clinton Community College was facing an existential crisis three years ago. With slumping enrollment and serious financial woes, the college in New York’s North Country region needed to get creative to survive.

College officials and leaders at the State University of New York system decided to move the campus five miles, from the outskirts of Plattsburgh to the city’s core, creating a novel co-location with SUNY Plattsburgh. The collaboration has been a success, with benefits for the local economy as well as for both institutions.

“One of the advantages of this model is that it strengthens connections between education and regional workforce needs,” says John King, SUNY’s chancellor.

Students and faculty members officially arrived at their new location on SUNY Plattsburgh’s main campus last fall. They’re getting better facilities and services while maintaining the community college’s identity and mission. Meanwhile, the money the college is saving on facilities and supplies has taken the campus out of its deficit. And enrollment is up 23% over two years.

“This is a big undertaking,” says Mark Henry, the Republican chair of the Clinton County Legislature. But he says co-location was the best idea, and certainly better than allowing the college to continue “limping along” or to shut down.

Clinton Community College students who are enrolled in healthcare programs can work at the local hospital, which now is located right across the street from their campus. They also now can access teaching spaces at the hospital. Henry says those benefits have boosted enrollment in the nursing program, which has nearly doubled in size.

With a location in a hospital setting, King says the healthcare programs are more closely aligned with the needs of local providers. The community college’s Institute for Advanced Manufacturing continues to offer training that’s tied directly to regional employers.

“Being co-located with SUNY Plattsburgh makes it easier to build clear pathways, from credentials to associate and bachelor’s degrees, so students can move efficiently from education into good-paying jobs in the region,” says King, who was the U.S. secretary of education during the tail end of the Obama administration.

The university also is benefiting from its new campus partner. It gets new operational and student service income, as well as a strengthened pipeline of transfer students. Meanwhile, students can cross-register for classes at both institutions. Alexander Enyedi, SUNY Plattsburgh’s president, said in a statement that the co-location has “reinforced our shared commitment to regional vitality.”

Moving a community college to a university campus seems like it would be controversial. But the transition has been smooth.

King says the key was clarity of purpose and a strong sense of partnership. To put the community college on more sustainable footing “meant moving quickly, working closely with local leaders, campus leadership, and the accreditor,” while staying focused on students throughout the transition.

SUNY achieved those goals, says Henry, who praises King and other officials across the system. “We have positioned this college to be successful,” he says. “The students like where they are.”

Open Tabs

Working Learners
Partnerships between employers and community colleges can lead to increased credential completion, particularly with short-term certificates, finds research from RAND. The evaluation focused on a program from Achieve Your Degree and 250 employers at Ivy Tech Community College locations in Indiana. Such partnerships can be lean, the study found, and would benefit from better leverage of federal tax benefits and more investment in learner supports.

Improving WIOA
Congress should incorporate a governing, statutory definition of “evidence-based” strategies in the federal workforce system, argue America Forward and Results for America. WIOA must demonstrate better outcomes, the two nonprofit policy organizations say, calling for the creation of a federal workforce development innovation fund, which should emphasize increasing earnings and employment, cost-effectiveness, and credential attainment.

Work-Based Learning
Intermediary organizations can play a vital role in addressing barriers employers face in creating work-based learning programs, particularly for small- and mid-sized businesses, finds a report from the Strada Education Foundation. The report features a framework for effective employer intermediaries, including how to connect businesses with the right partners to grow talent pipelines and how to sustain work-based learning programs.

Federal AI Center
The U.S. Department of Commerce is planning to create a national AI center in San Francisco, reports Bloomberg. AI export officials also will be based in cities across the U.S. No details have been released about the center. But Bloomberg reported that the Trump administration is looking to boost AI and the defense industry while tapping California’s natural resources and seeking to exert more influence over the state.

Regional Strategy
Many of Metro Detroit’s highest-priority job roles across the automotive and healthcare industries pay more than $70K without requiring a four-year degree, finds the Burning Glass Institute, in a report produced with the Detroit Regional Workforce Partnership. The report offers a roadmap for strengthening talent pipelines, supporting worker mobility, and aligning workforce strategy with the region’s long-term economic goals.

Hiring STARS
Lightcast and Opportunity@Work have partnered to try to give HR leaders a more accurate and inclusive picture of the labor market. A new filter from Lightcast, a labor market analytics firm, taps AI and skills intelligence to identify jobs that could be filled by workers among the more than 70M Americans who lack a four-year degree but are Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARS), a term popularized by the nonprofit Opportunity@Work.

Job Moves
Melissa Smith has been hired as the director of the Virginia Employment Commission. Smith worked a long stint at the U.S. Department of Labor and also worked at the U.S. Department of Commerce. Most recently she was vice president of public policy and workforce development at the Strada Education Foundation.

Humanity AI, a $500M collaborative philanthropic project focused on advancing socially beneficial AI, is seeking to hire an executive director.

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