FORTUNE: Your early childhood skills will become more important to landing a job than your degree, says a Harvard future of work professor
By JANE THIER
June 3, 2023
If you haven’t gone to therapy yet, here’s your sign: Addressing your childhood trauma could be critical for your career.
Skills-based hiring is on its way to becoming more valuable than a degree—and that’s coming from the very top. College degrees are losing their prominence in the hiring process, and with the rapid adoption of generative A.I. like ChatGPT, non-degree holders can expect plenty more tailwinds to come, says Joseph Fuller, a professor of management at Harvard Business School who co-leads the school’s Managing the Future of Work initiative.
“Do I think white collar work will inevitably require a college degree? Absolutely not,” Fuller tells Fortune in a recent interview. “It will require certain types of technical or hard skills not necessarily indicated by college.”
Plus, many jobs will continue requiring social skills “in significant measure,” Fuller went on—that could look like charming clients, listening actively in meetings, and maintaining strong relationships. According to a 2015 working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, nearly all job growth since 1980 has been seen in jobs that are “relatively social-skill intensive.” On the other hand, easily automatable jobs—those calling for ample analytical and mathematical reasoning and minimal social interaction—have fared poorly.
Eight years on, that’s proven to be prescient, and the trend towards skills is only gaining steam. Executives from IBM, LinkedIn, Penguin Random House, Apple, and Google have all heralded skills-based hiring as a welcome virtue—especially in a tight labor market where finding talent in new areas is critical. As of November 2022, just 41% of U.S.-based job postings required at least a bachelor’s degree—a drop from 46% in early 2019, according to an analysis from think tank Burning Glass Institute reported by the Wall Street Journal…
https://fortune.com/2023/06/03/early-childhood-skills-are-more-important-than-college-degrees/