Today, job seekers rely on outdated methods to communicate their abilities and work experiences. The status quo fails to capture the full spectrum of an individual’s range of skills and creates a bias favoring credentialed learning, which hurts the nearly 70 percent of Americans who don’t have a college degree. There is also a growing skills mismatch between employers and employees, which a Deloitte study estimates will cost our economy $2.5 trillion.

COVID-19 put a giant exclamation point on these colliding trends as American employers continue to struggle to find skilled talent and face a pressing moral imperative to move the needle on diversity, equity and inclusion.

The Open Skills Network, convening its first-ever virtual Skills Summit this week, offers a pathway out of these challenges and shines a promising light on how educators, employers and economic development professionals can collaborate to equip and empower a stronger workforce.

With the help of many technology partners, the Open Skills Network aims to create a decentralized network of open, accessible and machine-readable skills to propel the American workforce forward. Workers will have the ability to capitalize on the skills they have already developed, no matter where that skill acquisition took place. They will also be able to more easily identify learning opportunities that will help them achieve their career goals. At the same time, employers will be able to focus on a candidate’s verified skills rather than other subjective criteria. Skills-based hiring can help employers access talented people generally overlooked by traditional hiring methods, such as people of color, women, people who have disabilities, people who have criminal records, people who have paused their careers to care for family members, and people who lack a four-year degree.

Read the full article about skills-based hiring by Marni Baker Stein at EdSurge.