A common complaint from those in the tech industry recruiting for entry-level positions is that candidates lack the technical skills required despite having spent three or four years gaining a relevant degree.
The problem is that university is still pushed as the main route to a successful career. This has created what’s known as the paper ceiling, an invisible barrier that prevents job hunters who didn’t go to university from breaking into the tech industry.
Accenture, Google, IBM, and Workday are among the dozens of big-name firms to have thrown their weight behind a US-based campaign to tear down the paper ceiling. Opportunity@Work has set up the campaign in the hope of improving the job prospects of the more than 70 million people in the US who’ve been skilled through alternative routes – known as STARs.
The limitations of degree-based hiring
The tearing of the paper ceiling and the promotion of alternative routes into the workforce have been listed by Gartner as one of the nine future work trends to watch in 2024.
There's a good reason why skills should be valued over degrees. By restricting hiring for entry-level positions to university graduates, companies are hiring only those privileged enough to go to university in the first place.
Khyati Sundaram, an ethical hiring expert and chief executive officer of Applied, a recruitment platform that uses behavioral science to reduce bias, tells ITPro that firms that follow this formula may also overlook those who gained valuable knowledge and experience elsewhere. “It’s not inclusive and it narrows your talent pool significantly,” she says.
Another reason to look beyond university graduates is that “degrees often fail to keep pace with rapid changes in technology”, argues Kieran Rowley, director of community at Immersive Labs, which runs the Cyber Million program. This is designed to address the cybersecurity talent deficit. The aim is to improve access to one million entry-level cybersecurity operations jobs over the next decade – BT and Darktrace are just a couple of well-known firms offering job positions through the it.
“In cybersecurity, new threats and challenges emerge quickly. Degrees demonstrate a learning experience at one point in time, but what they don’t do is prove actual capabilities,” Rowley adds.
As for the workers being blocked by the paper ceiling, they’re likely to miss out on training and development opportunities. Their career progression will stall and earnings potential will diminish.
Tearing the paper ceiling widens the talent pool
The tech industry is making good progress on trying to tear down the paper ceiling. According to TestGorilla’s latest annual report on the state of skills-based hiring, released in June 2024, 88% of respondents in the industry are using this approach and 80% prefer it. Nearly all those who have adopted skills-based hiring have reported fewer incidents of having hired the wrong person.
For those companies yet to embrace skills-based hiring, “there is a responsibility for them to launch programs to recruit candidates from non-traditional backgrounds,” stresses Rowley. They also need to identify the skills gaps within their business, recruit for positions that meet their needs, and then align candidates that fit these roles.
Taking this approach means companies can hire someone who is equipped with the exact skills they need to address their problem. At the same time, the candidate will be starting in a job that they’re confident they can excel in and should be able to hit the ground running without requiring guidance. As a result, companies spend less time and resources on onboarding.
“Hiring should be based on creativity, critical thinking, and a willingness to learn and do the job.” says Rowley, adding that skills-based hiring can help ensure that talent “isn’t priced out of the tech industry simply because they couldn’t afford to go to university”.
Both Rowley and Sundaram point out that skills-based hiring leads to more diverse workforces, so it not only makes sense from a business standpoint but an ethical one as well.
Unconscious bias still remains
Even if companies do remove the need for a degree from job requirements, unconscious bias still prevents the paper ceiling from coming down.
A study by the Burning Glass Institute and Harvard Business School, which provides data on the future of work and workers, has found that companies that have removed the requirement of a degree have only increased their non-graduate hires by 3.5%. The research, published back in February, estimates that skills-based hiring resulted in just one in 700 hires in 2023.
Non-graduates may be put off applying for roles that don’t require degrees because they believe that they’ll inevitably be passed over for candidates who did go to university. The onus is on companies to create a culture of inclusivity and accessibility that encourages non-graduates to apply for roles.
There’s clearly still some way to go before the paper ceiling is completely torn. But as more companies remove the condition of a degree from job roles, unconscious bias should gradually be eliminated.
“This creates a domino effect,” Sundaram concludes. “As more companies see the success of others who have already ditched degree requirements, they are bound to follow. The collapse of the tech industry’s paper ceiling won’t be far behind.”
