WorkingNation logo with the tagline of "Covering the Future of Work"
DONATE
Search
Papia Debroy and Blair Corcoran de Castillo discuss skills-first hiring on the Work in Progress podcast with Ramona Schindelheim
Papia Debroy and Blair Corcoran de Castillo discuss skills-first hiring on the Work in Progress podcast with Ramona Schindelheim
Tags   
Tags 

Half of U.S. states have adopted skills-first hiring policies. Here are the results.

A conversation with Papia Debroy and Blair Corcoran de Castillo, Opportunity@Work
By Ramona Schindelheim
-

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | Youtube Music | RSS

In this episode of Work in Progress, we’re talking about skills-first hiring, the policy of hiring based on talent and skills as opposed to a degree or job title. Opportunity@Work has been a long-time advocate for skills-first hiring as a pathway to good careers and economic mobility through its Tear the Paper Ceiling awareness campaign.

Skills-first proponents are calling on employers to remove four-year degree requirements for thousands of high-wage jobs to open up opportunity to more people.

The nonprofit’s chief impact office Papia Debroy and its vice president of STARs policy Blair Corcoran de Castillo join me on the podcast to discuss a new study of the impact of prioritizing skills over degrees in hiring in state government.

Skills-First Hiring = More Opportunity for STARs

“There are about 60 million workers who have a bachelor’s degree or a higher level of educational attainment. Obviously, these workers have traversed a critical pathway in our U.S. labor force,” explains Debroy. “But, in addition to them, there are 70 million who have a high school diploma, do not have a bachelor’s degree, but have been bringing extraordinary skills to work. These are workers who are skilled through alternative routes, or STARs.”

Those alternative routes could include community college, military service, or on-the-job experience.

“A lot of skills-first hiring is really about how do we surface this population of talent to really understand skills instead of pedigree when we consider who is qualified for different jobs in the United States,” Debroy adds.

So far, according to Opportunity@Work, 26 states have signed on to the idea of hiring or promoting state employees based on their skills, knowledge, and abilities, regardless of how they attained those skills.

“What’s really exciting is the civil service, who many people thought were going to be the biggest barrier to public sector hiring change, are actually real advocates of this,” says de Castillo.

To determine if skills-based hiring is making progress in terms of expanding opportunities for job seekers and workers without four-year degrees, de Castillo and Debroy and others authored a study of its effectiveness in state government.

“States are actually thinking more critically about what it means to access all of the talent in their communities, and they’re thinking about what it means for representation in government, trusting government, and improved citizen services and just government efficiency,” says de Castillo.

“We’ve seen real action. We’ve seen bachelor’s degree requirements decline by 2.5 percentage points year-over-year because of policy exposure. This has expanded access to the jobs for STARs tremendously. Right now with the 26 states, 570,000 STARs could gain access to jobs they couldn’t yesterday or the year before this happened,” she concludes.

Debroy adds, “The Paper Ceiling represents an invisible barrier of degree screens, of biased algorithms, of stereotypes, of exclusive professional networking. These are all characteristics that block career opportunities for workers who are skilled through alternative routes.

“The first set of actions [by the states] has led to an increased awareness of this population as a vast, overlooked, diverse, and skilled population of the workforce that had been historically overlooked for public sector jobs. What was so extraordinary was not just the number that Blair just shared, but also that we’re starting to see shifts in precisely the types of jobs that STARs have the skills for but have historically not had access to obtain in a lot of these states.

“We’re excited to see the progress in roles like IT roles and management roles in health care roles, a lot of jobs that have historically offered economic mobility to the American workforce,” Debroy tells me.

There is a lot more in the podcast on the impact of skills-first hiring on workers and job seekers in the public sector, as well as across all of the workforce.

You can listen to the entire conversation here, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find our podcasts on the Work in Progress YouTube channel.

BTW, in the podcast, we give you a sneak peek at the Opportunity@Work virtual live event detailing the impact of of skills-first hiring that’s coming up on April 24. Check it out and register here.

Learn more about the Tear the Paper Ceiling campaign here.

Learn more about skills-first hiring practices in this Good Jobs Initiative Skills-First Hiring Starter Kit published in November 2024 by the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Episode 353: Papia Debroy and Blair Corcoran de Castillo, Opportunity@Work
Host & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Theme Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4
Transcript: Download the transcript for this episode here
Work in Progress Podcast: Catch up on previous episodes here

Related Articles
Get the latest from WorkingNation
DONATE
Terms of Use
Privacy Policy
Our Mission
Contact Us

© Copyright 2025 by Structural Unemployment, LLC dba WorkingNation

Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.

Share Bio