By Kelsey Gee
Americans looking to land a first job or break into a dream
career face their best odds of success in years.
Employers say they are abandoning preferences for college
degrees and specific skill sets to speed-up hiring and broaden the
pool of job candidates. Many companies added requirements to job
postings after the recession, when millions were out of work and
human-resource departments were stacked with resumes.
Across incomes and industries, the lower bar to getting hired is
helping self-taught programmers attain software engineering roles
at Intel Corp. and GitHub Inc., the coding platform, and improving
the odds for high-school graduates who aspire to be branch managers
at Bank of America Corp. and Terminix pest control.
"Candidates have so many options today," said Amy Glaser, senior
vice president of Adecco Group, a staffing agency with around
10,000 company clients in search of employees. "If a company
requires a degree, two rounds of interviews and a test for
hard-skills, candidates can go down the street to another employer
who will make them an offer that day."
Ms. Glaser estimates one in four of the agency's employer
clients have made drastic changes to their recruiting process since
the start of the year, such as skipping drug tests or criminal
background checks, or removing preferences for a higher degree or
high-school diploma.
Cutting job-credential requirements is more common in cities
like Dallas and Louisville, where unemployment is lowest, Ms.
Glaser said, as well as in recruiting for roles at call centers and
warehouses within logistics operations of retailers like Walmart
Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.
In the first half of 2018, the share of job postings requesting
a college degree fell to 30% from 32% in 2017, according to an
analysis by labor-market research firm Burning Glass Technologies
of 15 million ads on websites like Indeed and Craigslist. Minimum
qualifications have been drifting lower since 2012, when companies
sought college graduates for 34% of those positions.
Long work-history requirements have also relaxed: Only 23% of
entry-level jobs now ask applicants for three or more years of
experience, compared with 29% back in 2012, putting another 1.2
million jobs in closer reach of more applicants, Burning Glass data
show. Through the end of last year, another one million new jobs
were opened up to candidates with "no experience necessary," making
occupations like e-commerce analyst, purchasing assistant and
preschool teacher available to novices and those without a
degree.
It all marks a sharp reversal from the immediate aftermath of
the financial crisis, when employers could be pickier. Economists
say job requirements were harder to track then, because many
companies didn't post positions publicly and many resumes weren't
delivered electronically.
Now, recruiters say, the tightest job market in decades has left
employers looking to tamp down hiring costs with three options:
Offer more money upfront, lower their standards or retrain current
staff in coding, procurement or other necessary skills.
Rodney Apple, president of SCM Talent Group LLC in Asheville,
N.C., said if companies won't budge on compensation, experience or
education requirements, he walks away.
"We tell them, 'I'm sorry, but we can't help you fish for the
few underpaid or unaware applicants left out there,' " he said. SCM
finds workers for dozens of small and midsize companies seeking
supply-chain managers and logistics and warehouse operators across
the U.S. Mr. Apple said talent shortages are more extreme than he
has seen in nearly 20 years of recruiting.
Average wages have climbed steadily in the past year, but rising
prices of household goods have made those pay raises less valuable
to workers, keeping pressure on employers to hike salaries or
re-evaluate their target hire.
To attract more entry-level employees, toy maker Hasbro Inc.
divided four marketing jobs, which it previously designed for
business-school graduates with M.B.A.'s, into eight lower-level
positions. The new full-time roles included a marketing
coordinator, retail-planning analyst and trade merchandiser, all
involving more routine activities supporting higher-level staff in
the division.
Hasbro hiring managers originally sought candidates with a
two-year degree for the jobs but ultimately dropped any college
requirement, a spokeswoman said. The Pawtucket, R.I. company
received more than 100 applications and hired nine people.
The new shift, called "down skilling," bolsters a theory
articulated by Alicia Modestino , a Northeastern University
economist: When more people are looking for work, companies can
afford to inflate job requirements to find the best fit -- and did
so as unemployment spiked in 2008.
As college graduates and mid-career professionals raised their
hands for jobs as hotel managers and bookkeepers after the
recession, hires with more qualifications took a larger share of
positions normally filled by the 75 million U.S. workers who lack a
college degree.
After the recession, Terminix raised the bar for over 1,000
pest-control branch and service manager positions to require a
two-year degree or a bachelor's degree. In January, it reversed
course and made degrees "preferred" but not mandatory, said Betsy
Vincent, senior director of talent acquisition.
Anthony Whitehead worked for five years as a Terminix branch
manager in Florida before he was promoted to regional director in
early July. That position now accepts candidates with college
degrees or equivalent experience, helping Mr. Whitehead clinch the
role despite his earlier decision to enter the military instead of
college.
Mr. Whitehead, 35, said his approach to jobs requiring a degree
has been "apply anyways if I have the right experience, and then
have the education conversation if I need to," he said,
acknowledging his luck in working for companies like Terminix with
flexible requirements.
A lot of employers are loosening college requirements even as
the proportion of Americans with a bachelor's degree continues to
rise. Bank of America Corp. currently has 7,500 job openings
world-wide and fewer than 10% require a degree, said spokesman Andy
Aldridge. Mr. Aldridge said a surprising number of jobs could be
filled by non-graduates, including most of the bank's tellers and
employees handling customer-service and fraud-protection calls from
card holders.
In June, the bank unveiled plans to hire 10,000 more retail
workers from low-income neighborhoods over the next five years,
with or without degrees, said Chris Payton, head of talent
acquisition.
Not every company is relaxing requirements: Economists say
positions that require high levels of technical expertise, like
information security, still need advanced knowledge.
The tech industry has been quick to dismiss credentials like a
bachelor of arts degree as irrelevant, especially in emerging
fields like data analytics, where demand for talent has risen
faster than universities can churn out new graduates.
GitHub, recently acquired by Microsoft Corp., said it hasn't
required college degrees for most positions in years. Degrees are
optional for many "experienced hire" positions at chip maker Intel
Corp., which also has a "tech grad" job category the company
describes as fitting candidates with relevant classroom or work
experience from technical programs, such as coding boot camps.
Intel's career website advertises roles, including a lab
employee testing experimental devices in Santa Clara, Calif., and a
components researcher improving the semiconductor process in
Hillsboro, Ohio, as available to candidates with a two-year degree,
military training or other non-degree certifications.
Write to Kelsey Gee at kelsey.gee@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 29, 2018 07:14 ET (11:14 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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