Isaac Agbeshie-Noye, Program Director for Widening Pathways to Work at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Foundation, addresses the critical gap between employers' intent to adopt skills-first hiring practices and actual implementation. Drawing from his background in higher education and workforce development, Agbeshie-Noye discusses the newly launched Center for a Skills First Future, designed specifically to support small and medium-sized businesses that employ half of all Americans but often lack the resources of large corporations to navigate hiring transformation. He explores the striking disconnect where 90% of employers acknowledge the benefits of skills-first hiring, yet only 15% have actively implemented it, and explains how the Center's many resources—including a Skills Action Planner, resource library, skills-first credential, and vendor database—helps employers determine an achievable place to start rather than boiling the ocean. The conversation addresses frustrations from both job seekers navigating an AI-enhanced application landscape, and employers struggling to distinguish genuine skills from enhanced resumes, while emphasizing that skills-first approaches complement rather than replace traditional degrees by treating skills as the primary currency for understanding what all credentials represent.

Transcript

Julian Alssid: Welcome to the Work Forces Podcast. I'm Julian Alssid.

Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with innovators who are shaping the future of work and learning.

Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained.

Kaitlin LeMoine: This podcast is an outgrowth of our Work Forces consulting practice. Through weekly discussions, we seek to share the trends and themes we see in our work and amplify impactful efforts happening in higher education industry and workforce development all across the country. We are grateful to Lumina Foundation for its past support during the initial development and launch of this podcast, and invite future sponsors of this effort. Please check out our Work Forces podcast website to learn more. And so with that, let's dive in.

Kaitlin LeMoine: So our conversations on the podcast and in our consulting practice recently, increasingly revolve around the movement to a skills first approach to educating, hiring and developing talent.

Julian Alssid: Absolutely Kaitlin and and today we're turning our attention to the employer side of of that equation. And this is a critical conversation for all employers, but it's particularly critical for small and medium sized companies, where half of all Americans work. These smaller companies often lack the dedicated resources of large corporations to measure and track skills development, and it makes it challenging for them to adapt to new hiring models.

Kaitlin LeMoine: That's right. And while skills are all the buzz, there can be a real gap between intent and action. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, or SHRM Foundation, 90% of employers acknowledge the benefits of skills-first hiring, but only 15% have actively implemented it. That's a striking gap, and many HR leaders and executives recognize its strategic value, but struggle to implement significant changes.

Julian Alssid: Our guest today is uniquely positioned to address this challenge with a particular focus on helping small and medium sized employers unlock a wider range of qualified candidates by valuing a candidate's abilities and understanding how skills relate to traditional credentials.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Isaac Agbeshie-Noye is Program Director for Widening Pathways to Work at the SHRM Foundation. Over the last decade, he's served in a variety of leadership roles across nonprofit organizations and higher education institutions, and focused on aligning strategy, culture, and operations to create lasting transformation. He's also been an instructor for undergraduate and doctoral student seminars, exploring his passion for easing student transitions through their educational experiences. Isaac earned his bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of Virginia, as well as masters and doctoral degrees in higher education administration from George Washington University. Isaac, welcome to this podcast. We're so excited to have you on Work Forces with us today.

Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: Yes, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Julian Alssid: Yes, and thank you for joining us, Isaac. We've talked a little bit about your background. Well, tell us a bit more and what led you to your role at the SHRM Foundation.

Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: I got here in part because I'm always very fascinated and very passionate about education and how people go about learning things that then activates them to do things. And so working in higher education, and encountering all of these college students that came in at 18, 19, 20, 21 years old with some understanding of the things that they thought that they were going to do for the rest of their lives, that was just really fascinating to me. And then seeing the evolution over time where their mind changed around that thing, that was also fascinating. I ended up getting into workforce development and talent cultivation, because I realized that it wasn't just enough to understand what they were learning when they were on the college campus, I was really intrigued by then what did they do? Like, where did they go? Where did they end up? How did they navigate their careers after they left that environment? And so that kind of helped me think more broadly, beyond getting people to degree attainment to getting them actually to career mobility and to ultimately, a productive citizenry, which is what, which is what the mission of higher education is actually designed to be. And so I got connected to the SHRM Foundation in part because I just have been really fascinated with, how do we get employers into the game even further to understand their role and to help them as they are trying to tap into this workforce that is filled with skills, but yet we're not matching people in ways that are quick, even though we can see some of the ways in which there might be alignment. And so this position is is actually structured to help try and address that, that gap.

Kaitlin LeMoine: As we jump into this conversation, we'd love to learn a little bit more about the SHRM Foundation and your role in widening pathways to work.

Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: The SHRM Foundation is the 501(c)(3) nonprofit arm of the Society for Human Resource Management. And the Society for Human Resource Management is the largest network of HR professionals in the world. And so we have 340,000 members that are then deployed and activated into all types of businesses around the world. And so we believe that we can leverage HR and leverage those professionals to advance social good, which is how the foundation came to be. And so in the foundation, we focus on three bodies of work: strengthening the HR field, because we don't often think about who's going to come behind the current HR folks, and who is actually going to take on the new challenges related to HR, and how are we positioning those folks to be successful in that, and so we have a body of work that's focused there. We have a body of work that's focused on thriving together, and how are we creating cultures of care within employers and employer environments. And so how are we focusing on things like the social determinants of health, about or caregiving or workplace mental health, the types of things that make people feel seen and safe at work in order to continue to be there. And then the third part is my area, which is the widening pathways to work area which is focused on skills first, and the things that we do to help employers adopt skills first approaches. How do we test things, try things out so that we are reducing the risk as best we can for people to adopt initiatives that are going to help talent be seen better. And then the other part of that is untapped pools of talent. So who are we not seeing and how can we create opportunities to see them better and also to get them fully activated in this world of work. And so the SHRM Foundation does all of that, and our goal is to try and figure out where are, what's the messaging, what are the levers, where, who are the partners that we need to bring together to actually make this ecosystem work for job seekers and employers at the same time.

Julian Alssid: Tell us a bit more about your area, Widening Pathways to Work. And in particular, we're really interested in hearing about the new Center for a Skills First Future.

Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: What's so exciting about that portfolio is that we're really trying to figure out what are the things that are getting in the way, and how can we start to solution around those things? And so we know that there are 7.3 million open jobs, and we are highly dissatisfied with that, because it's not because there's a shortage of talent. There's just a shortage of alignment. There isn't those connections and those systems that we're leveraging to make talent visible so that employers can make hiring decisions that make the most sense for them are, to some degree working, and in a lot of ways not working, and that is resulting in a lot of job seekers being incredibly frustrated, and employers also being dissatisfied with what they're getting. And in an age of AI, where we do have some functions that are being shifted based on technology, and we have job seekers leveraging AI to try and make themselves look more visible and competitive, we're in this environment where we have to be having this conversation about how we get these different sides to see each other. So that is what's exciting about the Widening Pathways work, because we are going to have to be considerate of all the things that are happening socially if we're going to make these pathways wider for everybody to walk through them. The Center for a Skills First Future we just launched that in June. We're really excited about that, because this is our try to help meet employers where they are, and that type of work is critical. You've mentioned before about our specific focus on small and mid sized businesses. This is intentional, because for large and enterprise businesses where you are well resourced to try a lot of things. And, you know, figuratively, throw a lot of spaghetti at the wall. You can try a lot of things to see what works. And then you can invest, or make investments based on what you think is working. And you have teams to support that you have, quite frankly, you have teams. To try a lot of different things. For our small and mid sized businesses, they don't, do not have that luxury as much. It's usually a team of one or a team of two that are driving all of the initiatives related to human capital in the organization. And so you can't, you know, it's hard to be thinking about managing benefits and also recruitment, and also employee grievances, and also onboarding and off boarding. And so what we were trying to do is to figure out, how can we put a series of tools at someone's fingertips and let them choose their own adventure? And so that's what the Center really tries to do. So we have four major components of it, where we are trying to take resources and make them most accessible. We have a Skills Action Planner, so any organization can go in and just knowing what's going on at the organization, you can take this assessment, which will give you a readout of your current state and where you are in terms of adoption of skills first practices, and also it maps out for you your desired state based on what you said that you would like to be. And we just then curate a list of resources to help you get from point A to point B. And so we try to remind people, this is this is the time to be ambitious, but we don't have to boil the ocean. So you get overwhelmed when you think about all of the skills first things that you could do. We try to normalize for folks, but it's okay to just do one thing. Just, let's just try that one thing and see how that goes. So whether it is removing degree credentials from a job description, or maybe it's leaning into behavior based hiring, whatever you choose that makes the most sense for where your organization is, we'll give you some tools to at least try and get that momentum going. We have a Skills First credential. It's a one of a kind credential. So for folks that are trying to learn more about what it means to navigate this space and how to navigate some of the barriers you may be running into in your organization, there's a space for you to learn and deepen your skill set so you can help bring others in your organization along, which is really exciting. We have a resource library where we are amassing all of the things scholarly and practically, that have been sourced around this movement, and having it all in one place so that you can search for it however you need to and get access to it. And then for folks that are further along than know this is what I want to do. I just need a vendor, or I need a partner to help me. We have a vendor database where people can go in and just access those professional services that they need to get something off the ground to move closer to implementation. And so we created this hub with the support of 14 coalition partners to really figure out, What do employers need, and how can we make those tools most accessible to them? We're acknowledging we are operating in this space because we have the connections to employers. We're not the only people operating in this space, and everybody has a different lane that they're working in some folks focus on talent. Some folks are focusing on employers. Some are focused on community based organizations. Some are focused on policy. But we all have to be in a conversation together about this, because the ripple effect impact all of us, and so it's great to also have brought together this coalition to be having these conversations together, and so we're excited about the center, and we're excited about how it can hopefully help accelerate adoption for as many people as possible, regardless of how your organization is structured or where you are on your skills first journey.

Kaitlin LeMoine: So Isaac, given that you know, this was developed with a coalition of employers, really at the table to help inform. I'm curious to hear a little bit more. What are some of the most pressing challenges you're hearing from employers? Like, what's the perspective of, I know you said, you know, maybe just start with one thing, right? Like, maybe it's hard to take on this whole skills-first bucket of work. But I'm just curious to know, you know, what are some of the perspectives you're hearing from employers and from job seekers in this new, relatively new skills first environment that we're operating in?

Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: I'll start with the job seekers. I think that the process is frustrating. This is a tough job market to be in right now, and I say that not only is someone working to widen some of those pathways, but also as somebody that had to navigate that job market. And so I'm three months into this role, and so I also was on the job seeking side, trying to figure out how I get my skills recognized and validated, and this is a hard environment to do that, particularly. When folks are also leveraging AI to make enhancements to their candidate materials, like your resume, your cover letter. And so we're finding that a lot of things because of that look the same. So it becomes really hard for employers to distinguish who has done what. And so that is a very frustrating experience for job seekers to be in, where you want to be actively participating in work, but because of the scale and the size of the job market right now, it's just really hard to stand out on the employer side. We hear a lot about there's a lot of intent, as you mentioned earlier. You know 90% of employers want to be leaning into these skills first approaches. Only 15% have actually done things that's because operationalizing a big idea is hard, and change is harder, especially when you have developed a tradition around certain types of practices that you feel like makes it easier. Like before, a degree was a signifier for you that somebody had some skill or proficiency that you wanted, and you could then filter people out by that. Now we're seeing degrees are not the only place that are telling those stories. Experiences tell us that, skills tell us that, competencies tell us that. And so how do we create an environment where employers can see all of that and then know what to do with it, because it's just so much, and in that environment, not all things operate the same or are created equal? Not all credentials are the same, not all degrees are created equal. So for a hiring manager that's just trying to understand, can this person do what I need? There are so many things to consider to try and get to that answer, and we're then finding people are going through that process of getting through that to that answer, and finding out that that you know, there's more upskilling that's needed, or there are additional supports that are needed in order for that employee to contribute and actively participate. So there's just so many things going on here for employers and for job seekers at the same time, and because there are very few mechanisms for those populations, those audiences, to be talking to each other, that's just harboring more frustration right with the process, because people are not really communicating, and also people are existing with all of these challenges that seem insurmountable to try to fix. So what we're trying to do, at least on the employer side, is make it more digestible, to make it step by step, for us to start thinking about, oh, well, have you considered this? Let's just try this first, and let's see what we're learning from this. Let's understand what success looks like when it comes to this. And one other thing that I'd like to add is, I do want to emphasize, we have chartered this Center for a Skills First Future, and sometimes there's some confusion around what Skills First actually means. And so we are trying to figure out that many different ways that people can be visible to employers and employers can recognize and validate certain skills, but we're not saying that this is a complete replacement for the bachelor's degree, and so we're not working in competition with degrees. We're trying to figure out and get clearer about the ways that degrees also convey a certain set of skills. And so we're trying to treat skills as the primary currency here for us to even understand what degrees tell us when they come across or when applications come in. And so that is one misconception that I'm hoping to clarify, is that we are not trying to campaign against degrees. We're not saying degrees are not valuable. They obviously have a lot of value, but the underlying thing around a degree, a degree is supposed to signify skills and abilities and competencies, and so we're trying to figure out, how do we get closer to that, so that whether you have a degree or not, you can still be seen and can actively participate in this job market and contribute to the workforce.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Right. And so that everyone is communicating their skills regardless of what degree or credential has been attained. It's about this is the important thing for everyone. Yep. A lot of sense, yep.

Julian Alssid: Right. And it brings us back to that interplay between work and learning and education. And again, it's complicated. We can't separate these all out artificially.

Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: Yeah, they're all in relationship with each other. I will mention anything with talent is so it's challenging because success is always moving, like the metrics with success is always changing. And it's the long game. Like, you don't know when you sometimes you know when you hire someone, and you're like, I don't think so. Or maybe sometimes you might know, but for the most part, knowing that somebody can actually perform well, it takes time and but we are so inclined to want to know whether something works right away or not, and you can't do that with people all the time. It takes a while for you to know that, okay, this decision I made, using this approach worked, and I would, and I'm interested in doing it again. And so, so we're trying to remind people that this is a long game, and we can't usually see that the ship is turning while we're in it, but you can surely look back and say, Wow, look at where we were, and look at how our processes have changed, and who we've been able to get here and then retain over time. So we are on our way there in ways that will support employers and job seekers at the same time. It makes

Julian Alssid: It makes a lot of sense Isaac, and it's interesting Kaitlin as Isaac, talking this through, it so resonates for me in terms of the work we do, which is workforce and talent development, is really complicated. And it was complicated before AI, it was complicated before skills first. And it's not getting any less complicated. And so a lot of what we end up focusing on is trying to get to start somewhere and to iterate and to get some success, and to try to build on the success. And if something doesn't work to adjust, and as you say, because each situation is so different, each, you know, down to the employee or the company or the industry. And I guess the question I have for you is, and I understand that the Center's early days. You know, it sounds like you've been giving this a lot of thought, obviously, and interested to hear about any early wins, you know, sort of specific early wins that you can speak to where companies have begun implementing skills based approaches to you pick, recruitment, hiring, training.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Or even specific tools, right? Like, which tools are working really well, right? Because I feel like it is hard to know sometimes, like, what are the resources that are really going to stick and really help the most HR professionals? Yeah, right. I mean, given the number of members you have.

Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: I love this question, because there are just so many. There are just so many stories to tell. And this is, in part, what we are so excited about with the Skills Action Planner, is that it does give people also because they're reporting on their current state, they're telling us about wins that they've already achieved, that they may not even be recognizing as wins. And so if you're even at a place where you got to that Planner and you can say that I've had a skills first conversation with my team, that is a win. And so we're trying to at least celebrate those things and recognize those. But what we are featuring on our site is we have a host of employer examples. And so you can go into our library and click on employer examples, and we we have sourced over 100 different examples across different industries regarding practices that people have taken on, whether it's been focusing on apprenticeship, and using that as a gateway for people to enter the organization, learn about the role, and then to develop in the role, or we have organizations that have taken advantage of different ways of seeing and recognizing skills, so that they could then provide a curated list to employees regarding the types of skills they could develop in order to be competitive for a promotion or an advancement in their job. And so we've had examples around that. We've had organizations that have shared with us about ways that they're rethinking professional development or upskilling just based on what they feel like their future needs are. And so we've had organizations that have built succession plans built on the skills that employees who are leaving are leaving with so that they know then what to recruit for and how then they need to up staff themselves in order to perform those jobs in the future. So we have lots of examples there, so that people are leaning into those for inspiration. And it's not just you looking at a checklist and figuring out I need to do A, and then B, and then C. It's you trying to figure out, okay, this organization took this approach. They're working in construction, they're working in manufacturing, they're working in retail, and they have understood that this is a problem for them, and this is how they went about trying to fix it. That may not be the approach for me, but I could take some of the things that they've applied there to think through what could actually work for me and where I am. And so the employer examples, I'm going to always be yelling off of, I'm always going to be screaming about those, because more than scholarly articles and other things, they give you some idea about how somebody took theory and actually turned it into practice, but practice that worked for them. So I do encourage folks, we have quite a few on quite a few there, because we've had to design a product that hopefully was industry agnostic, even though people are always wanting to know people are always feeling like they are a snowflake, and in the world of work, like there's nobody else like them. And that is to some degree true, but a lot of the issues that we deal with are similar across a lot of organizations, and so just seeing some examples of how people have gone about it, and a lot of different examples hopefully helps to unlock people's minds and hearts to think differently about what it could be. And so I encourage folks to check out that library, just to see some of the examples that we have in there that we're really excited about.

Kaitlin LeMoine: So building off of your last response here, I feel like what you just said about, you know, the industry agnostic tools and steps and strategies especially, but you could, you could provide industry specific examples as well. I'm curious, what practical steps do you recommend that our audience can take to become forces in developing skills, first practices? What are a couple of takeaways you can leave our audience with today?

Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: Yeah, so I will, I will respond to that in two ways. So thinking about audience as employer, understand where you are. So we have a we have that Skills Action Planner to just position people to just understand. Can you articulate what is going on at your organization right now? What are your needs currently, and what do you anticipate your needs being? And that is it's it makes the world of difference for you to know that it provides the greatest amount of clarity, because even HR leaders or other folks who are positioned hiring managers, because you can always level set with your leadership around here's where I think we are here's where I think that we're going. Is that right? And that is useful? And so I think that all employer partners, you're representing an organization, and you're listening, that is step one as an individual, because I also think that we all have individual agency here, step one is for me. And I told folks this at a conversation I had a couple of days ago. Do you understand what your skills are? Because how can we actually convince people that a skills first approach is it matters and is important, if you can't even articulate the ways in which and for me, the person, this is how I understand my skills are being activated in the role that I am currently in. And so if there is some opportunity for you to also do some understanding of what your skills are, what are you trying to develop? How is your organization positioned to help you develop those skills where there are opportunities, where you can try small things to advance your own skill development, and then recommend some of those things to others, like we have individual agency that we can certainly activate without getting the C suite level endorsement. And so I always encourage folks to think through, what does it look like in the environment that's most local for you, in the environment where you have control, and you certainly have control over your own professional development, and so if there's an area for you to lean in and just understand where you are, I think that that benefits and better informs whatever type of approach you're going to propose that other people jump on. I'll mention we have a here. We are piloting an HR apprenticeship program, registered apprenticeship program, which we're really excited about and also naturally made sense, because HR is the folk. The HR teams are the ones that are trying to convince other teams to take on apprenticeship programs. And so it would make sense for HR to also have an apprenticeship program to understand what the pain points are, because then you can speak to it from experience, as opposed to trying to sell people on a concept or idea where they're going to present to you the challenges, and you might not know how to respond to them, and so, so I always offer that just start local, start with what's in your locus of control, and let's see what lessons you can gain from that that can inform the way that you try and bring and motivate other people to come along.

Julian Alssid: Very practical, very grounded. I really appreciate that. As we wind down this conversation, certainly, we want to keep following your work so you know there's watch just you'll see us poking around, and hopefully we can have another conversation when you're a little further down the road with the sound of it. Yeah. How can our listeners learn more and continue to follow.

Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: Thank you for this question. The center that I speak of is located at skillsfirstfuture.org and so when you visit that site, you'll see all of the components that I've discussed here. You'll see ways where you can tell us if we're missing resources that we should add, or even if you see an article that you thought, oh, this is really interesting. I'd like to share this. We love to hear about that. We have places where you can sign up to hear more about new things as we're developing them, and we will, in the future, be building a community component on there so that people can actually talk to each other about the types of things that they're doing in real time, and hopefully get some feedback there. So skillsfirstfuture.org is where you can learn more about all the things that I've discussed, and where you can plug in and talk to us as we're learning more things about how to accelerate some of this adoption for employers that hopefully will then benefit and inspire job seekers as well.

Kaitlin LeMoine: Thank you for that, Isaac, really appreciate knowing how we can continue to follow this great and exciting new work and really again, appreciate you joining us for this conversation today.

Isaac Agbeshie-Noye: Yes, thank you for having me. This was fun.

Julian Alssid: Thanks so much, Isaac.

Kaitlin LeMoine: We hope you enjoyed today's conversation, and appreciate you tuning in to Work Forces. Thank you to our listeners and guests for their ongoing support and a special thanks to our producer, Dustin Ramsdell. If you're interested in sponsoring the podcast or want to check out more episodes, please visit workforces dot info forward slash podcast. You can also find Work Forces wherever you regularly listen to your favorite podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, like and share it with your colleagues and friends, and if you're interested in learning more about Work Forces Consulting, please visit workforces dot info forward slash consulting for more details about our multi service practice.