The Enduring Skills of the Past, Present and Future
A decade slips by. We find ourselves sitting in the year 2033 — a time marked by democratized innovation and significant progress towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), particularly SDG Target 4.4 regarding inclusive and equitable education. As we actively enjoy the long-awaited fruits of a truly equity-centered, iteration-based, and co-created R&D process for measuring durable ‘soft’ skills, we reflect humbly on the founding year 2023, when early decisions and priorities first paved the way.
As we ponder the long-passed year 2023, we reflect on the fact that a mere decade ago was a time when unfair barriers to entry for many jobs were finally broken down as a result of state employers eliminating the four-year degree requirement, a ripple effect that began in Pennsylvania. As a result, there was an enormous influx of applicants for nearly every liberated role. But there were unintended consequences. The change led to burnout among hiring managers, whose primary jobs were never HR- or recruitment-centered in the first place. It also led to an era of immense social-desirability bias whereby historically underserved communities converged towards the mean, conforming to the dominant culture in an effort to display the most ‘socially acceptable version’ of these durable skills. Thus, ironically, after a brief period of equity and hope, the dissolution of the bachelor’s degree imperative in America saw many job seekers finding it even more difficult to stand out, get noticed, and get the job.
This was evidenced in those early years through individual experiences, like the story of Mercedes. She was a 23-year-old gig worker based in Philadelphia, and she was grateful for the news that state jobs had eliminated the four-year college degree requirement. She immediately applied for her dream job but struggled to make a lasting impression when in competition with seemingly everyone in the city and beyond — especially for remote work.
She reached out to her Uncle, Tomas, who managed a team of 12 factory workers in a Pittsburgh steel mill. In their conversation, Tomas exclaimed, “We have never relied on bachelor’s degrees for hiring and promotion at the plant, Mercedes. In fact, over the past year, we have been using something far more reliable!”
That’s when she learned about the Durable Skills Assessment, which had been released around that same time after a thorough equity-centered design research program centered on the needs of educators, hiring managers, and job seekers alike. She registered online and took this assessment to help signal to employers — and more specifically, hiring managers who would directly supervise her if she were to be hired — what specific transferable and long-lasting skills she had acquired through her lived and learned experiences. This was her golden ticket. She could demonstrate job readiness very effectively to hiring managers while, at the same time, not feeling forced into an expensive 4-year degree attainment process that she was not inclined to pursue. Mercedes was a pioneer, and in the coming years, the opportunities and lives of scores of people like her were fundamentally transformed. What followed was a decade of meaningful social change — the kind we had all been waiting for.
BACK TO THE FUTURE IN 2033: DEMOCRATIZED INNOVATION
For anyone sitting in the year 2033 looking back, it’s easy to see that there have been a plethora of stories like Mercedes’ over time due to how accessible and equity-centered the Durable Skills Rubric and Assessment are for both job seekers and hiring managers. Mercedes was ultimately invited to three interviews following the completion of her Durable Skills Assessment, and felt confident about her odds of advancing further in at least one of the jobs.
Looking back, it’s also evident that America Succeeds, Common Group, and CompTIA were pioneers in 2023 in creating a formidable ripple in the pre-hire assessment and educational testing landscape. That key shift caused the labor market to unfreeze in ways previously thought impossible, allowing it to be more inclusive of diverse forms of knowledge, skill, and ability. Maybe in ten more years’ time — in the 2040s — it’s feasible to think that technical-skills training will come back in-house, within corporate L&D where it once prevailed, as a result of employers being able to hire high-potential people so effectively based on the Durable Skills assessment. Sector observers in the 2030s find themselves daring to think that perhaps by the 2040s, this could lead to a renewed society where the process of becoming qualified for work isn’t an individual burden, rather a collective societal obligation, thus moving us away from a world marked by hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt for degrees that only might lead to livable wage jobs and careers.
Who knows what the future will hold — the 2040s are a long way off — but what we do know is this: the intentional short-term investment in deep equity-centered research to inform the rubric back in 2023 had an enormous social return on investment today in 2033; the goal of the original project partners has been realized already, and the world is a better place because of it. And there is still so much potential to be unlocked.
Current Project Update: Prototypes of the Durable Skills rubric are co-created and informed by the diverse project stakeholders. So far, more than 600 organizations across the country have engaged in the effort in addition to a slew of diverse educators and job seekers. We look forward to sharing more updates and engaging in further discussions at ASU GSV! Special Thanks to Lisa Baird, Naomi Graham-Stanford, and George Vinton from the Common Group for their collective time and support in crafting this message. Photo by Nubelson Fernandes on To learn more about Durable Skills, please visit https://americasucceeds.org/policy-priorities/durable-skills.
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About Jasmine Burton: Jasmine [she/her] works to dismantle barriers for structurally excluded people. She is a designer, entrepreneur, and social-inclusion specialist who uses design thinking, business strategy, and evidence-based research to build a more inclusive world. For a decade, she has led the sanitation nonprofit Wish for WASH as the founding CEO in addition to leading innovative ESG projects through her independent consulting firm Hybrid Hype. More recently, Jasmine has jumped into the world of workforce development and education innovation as the first senior manager of social-impact consulting firm Common Group.
Originally published at https://medium.com on April 17, 2023.
