Tech industry expansion favours skills over traditional learning
The tech industry has revealed a preference for skills over traditional learning, with the "new-collar" or "middle-skill" job sector granting less weight to college degrees and career history, according to a feature in the New York Times. Microsoft has been championing a skill-centred approach, giving hiring firm Skillful $25m to foster more opportunities for those struggling to keep pace with the market shifts attendant to the digital economy. Developments in the technology industry could lead to a wider skills-based approach throughout other sectors. Numerous tech companies, such as Facebook, have also launched their own educational software.

ROCKET CENTER, W.Va. — A few years ago, Sean Bridges lived with his mother, Linda, in Wiley Ford, W.Va. Their only income was her monthly Social Security disability check. He applied for work at Walmart and Burger King, but they were not hiring.

Yet while Mr. Bridges had no work history, he had certain skills. He had built and sold some stripped-down personal computers, and he had studied information technology at a community college. When Mr. Bridges heard IBM was hiring at a nearby operations center in 2013, he applied and demonstrated those skills.

Now Mr. Bridges, 25, is a computer security analyst, making $45,000 a year. In a struggling Appalachian economy, that is enough to provide him with his own apartment, a car, spending money — and career ambitions.

“I got one big break,” he said. “That’s what I needed.”

Mr. Bridges represents a new but promising category in the American labor market: people working in so-called new-collar or middle-skill jobs. As the United States struggles with how to match good jobs to the two-thirds of adults who do not have a four-year college degree, his experience shows how a worker’s skills can be emphasized over traditional hiring filters like college degrees, work history and personal references. And elevating skills over pedigree creates new pathways to employment and tailored training and a gateway to the middle class.