“When I think about the 70 million workers that are skilled through alternative routes [STARs], it’s really important for me that we have a solution right now to the labor shortage,” says Angela Briggs-Paige, head of people and culture, Opportunity@Work.

“It’s really important for me that as an HR professional, that we train our people, our hiring managers to really be able to connect, understand, and ask questions about the transferable skills talent may have – even though they don’t have four-year bachelor degrees.”

WorkingNation sat down with Briggs-Paige at SHRM 2022 Annual Conference & Expo in New Orleans.

Briggs-Paige reminds that ‘no degree does not mean no skills.’ 

She adds it’s important for job seekers to understand how their skills might make them candidates for jobs. “One of the things that keeps me up at night is – how do we help candidates understand the skills they’ve acquired? Being able to look at a role and specifically focus on the competencies, the skills that are needed for that role, not necessarily the correlated experience or the correlated bachelor’s degree. How do we focus on those competencies, those skills that are actually applicable to the position?”

Learn more about Opportunity@Work.