Former IBM CEO: Stop hiring based on college degree

Speaking at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit last week, Ms. Ginni said, in fact, up to 43% of current IBM open jobs require a traditional college diploma. .

With nearly 40 years with IBM, Ms. Rometty has spoken out about the need to reconsider hiring in the technology sector, especially in a time when a four-year university can waste money. Meanwhile, affiliate programs, vocational schools … can be more accessible and adaptable to the rapid development of technology.

Virginia Rometty, former CEO of IBM. Photo: Chesnot / Getty Images

In the senior leadership position, as the company’s first female CEO in 2012, Rometty sees the digital age “not becoming an all-encompassing era for everything. good and bad. If in this era there are no equal opportunities for technology training, a lot of people will be left behind. ”

The pandemic, which has caused the most inequitable recession in modern history, has exposed and exacerbated this division. Office jobs have mostly recovered from the economic downturn earlier this year, according to a Washington Post report. About 6 in 10 employees with university degrees were able to continue working from home during times of crisis, compared with about 1 in 7 workers with only a high school degree. Lower-paid direct jobs, held by women and people of color, have also recovered.

Some of the demographics most affected by the current recession include mothers with school-age children, black men, black women, Hispanic men, and Americans. Asian descent, young Americans between 25 and 34 and people without a college degree.

Amid the impact of the growing pandemic, new labor market trends such as automation and large-scale digitization, investment in skills training are even “more important than ever”.

Currently, Rometty shares three things that employers should prioritize instead of a college degree.

The first is “to value people’s progressive spirit more than their skills,”. Focusing on someone’s ability to learn instead of what they learned “completely changed” the way she recruited workers.

“Now, I want to see if someone is eager to learn, I can check that out when hiring.”

Next, she believes that companies should provide their employees with an AI-based learning system. Such as the “Netflix Education” platform. Each company can give employees some initial courses on the skills they need to know. Based on their abilities, as well as their personal preferences and goals as a worker, this program will provide them with courses tailored to their career path and developmental pathways. company.

Finally, employers must be really clear about what they need from their employees and guide them to learn, hone their career path or in a new direction depending on public goals. ty.

“The people out there have skills,” says Ms Rometty. We can teach them hard skills, but they themselves have to have soft skills first ”.

The priorities in this business are also the things that the whole society should follow and “If you master them, people can change society forever.”