Employers don’t recognize companies that offer many of these courses, so these credentials don’t carry much weight
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While
his company is eager to hire data scientists, for example, “taking a
class…doesn’t carry much value in recruiting,” he said.
Employers’
search for hires with up-to-the-minute technical and digital skills has
given rise to a boom in online classes and tutorials. Course providers
like Udemy and Lynda.com, along with coding boot camps and massive open
online courses (MOOCs) such as edX and Coursera, promise to refresh
workers’ skills or help them acquire expertise they didn’t get in
college.But those new credentials don’t carry much weight in hiring yet, recruiters say, because managers don’t trust or recognize many of the companies and organizations behind the badges and courses.
“This market is basically chaos,” said Anthony Carnevale, director of Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. “With these credentials, there’s no one body setting a standard.”
Job seekers are frustrated, too. St. Paul, Minn. resident Adam Hook, 33, has taken dozens of classes from online providers such as Udemy, Coursera and Microsoft Virtual Academy. Mr. Hook is yet to land a full-time job and says he has heard from employers that credentials from online courses aren’t enough to cover his lack of a college degree.
The
recognition of specialized skills could go in two directions, employers
and labor market experts say. Independent groups could step in to
develop standards for credentials, or employers could test more
applicants’ skills during hiring, which could make some laurels—be it a
bachelor’s degree or boot-camp diploma—superfluous.
A
cadre of academic researchers, with guidance from business trade groups
such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, is setting out to
create standards. They are building an online registry where employers
and workers can search credentials—such as a badge from an online
academy—and see exactly what skills they reflect. The effort is
supported by a $2.25 million grant awarded this year by the Lumina
Foundation, which has set a goal that 60% of Americans should acquire
high-quality, post-high school training by 2025.
“We want
employers to be able to lay out the skill requirements of a job, and
then find credentials that best match their criteria,” said Robert
Sheets, a workforce expert at George Washington University, which is
creating the registry with Southern Illinois University and the American
National Standards Institute. A pilot version of the directory, with
around 100 educational institutions publishing their credential
information, will be available next spring or summer.
To
convince employers that a badge is a sign of rigorous training, the
group plans to ask companies about the credentials held by hires in
particular roles—a sort of validation of any given course or badge, said
Jason Tyszko, senior director of policy and programs at the Chamber of
Commerce Foundation.
“Absent
that,” he added, “people could be going through a lot of programs,
spending a lot of money and time, and not coming out with anything that
employers want.”
LinkedIn
Corp. is piloting a similar program in Phoenix and Denver, asking
employers about the skills they desire and the credentials of their new
hires. Using that data, LinkedIn will allow users to find out which
skills are required for a given role, and which particular courses or
training sessions recent hires in that role have held. The platform will
launch early next year in the two cities.
Even
the White House is entering the fray. Earlier this year, President
Barack Obama’s administration launched TechHire, an initiative to “fast
track” training and job opportunities for people without traditional
academic backgrounds. The program is expected to speed up validation of
emerging credentials, in part by convincing employers to review their
skill requirements and work closely with training organizations offering
nontraditional coursework such as coding boot camps and online
programs.
Meanwhile, employers
may try harder to test candidates’ skills—in programming, spreadsheets
or marketing—with online job simulations administered before, during or
after an interview. At an HR technology conference in October, a host of
firms demonstrated tests designed to assess a candidate’s skill in
everything from basic math to drafting legal contracts.
Should
those practices become widespread, a college degree or a technical
certificate may become irrelevant, predicted Dennis Yang, founder of
online learning platform Udemy.
“The
most important skill in the employee base of the future is the ability
to learn something new, and a willingness to do so. There are still very
few people who have the motivation to do that,” he said.
For
now, badges, one-off courses and other micro-credentials are meaningful
mostly because they show a person’s openness to learning, recruiters
say.
At Waste Management Inc.,
Melkeya McDuffie recently promoted an internal candidate to manage the
trash hauler’s contingent workforce programs, in part because he had
taken several MOOCs—massive open online courses—through Coursera.
“For
me, that tipped the scale in favor of that candidate,” said Ms.
McDuffie, the company’s senior director of talent acquisition. “I was
not at all familiar with the course content. It was the fact that he had
taken the initiative and could demonstrate a greater depth of
knowledge,” she said.
Culled from The Wall Street Journal
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