It's Getting Easier to Get Hired. NewsWire

NewsWire: 11/19/21

• Companies eager to hire are easing job requirements to get more applicants in the door. While this is in response to the current labor shortage, some economists believe that these changes will outlast the pandemic. (The Wall Street Journal)
• NH: In this tight labor market, companies just want to get more candidates through the door. So they’re overhauling the hiring process.
• The Body Shop has gotten rid of background checks, drug tests, and minimum educational requirements. CVS stopped asking college graduates for their GPAs and no longer requires a high school diploma for entry-level roles in stores. UPS claims that their hiring process is so simple that seasonal applicants can now apply and get hired in 10 minutes.
• This shift isn’t just changing how individual companies work, but entire industries. According to new research from EMSI Burning Glass and the Conference Board, 42% of employment ads for insurance sales agents required a bachelor’s degree in January 2019. This dropped to 26% in September 2021.
• Their research estimates that if employers continue lowering educational requirements at the current rate, 1.4 million more jobs will be available to people without college degrees in the next five years.
• In pieces about the ballooning costs of higher ed (see “A Student Debt Jubilee... Is It Coming?”), I’ve suggested that hiring managers should de-emphasize college degrees. Employers should not require them for any and all positions; it makes no sense. Young people are already turning away from college (see "College Enrollment Continues to Fall"), and a shift like this will only encourage more of them to go straight into the workforce.
• But will it last? Conventional wisdom says that when the labor market tilts back in employers’ favor, companies will resume being selective. Companies last raised job requirements en masse after the Great Recession. Yet this is anything but an ordinary economy, and it’s looking increasingly likely that we’re not going to see total employment return to pre-pandemic levels. (See “Was the October Jobs Report Good News?”)
• Recent policy changes are also tilting the hiring process towards fewer restrictions. In July, the Biden administration passed an executive order that calls for the FTC to ban or limit excessive occupational licensing requirements as well as employer non-compete agreements. This will likely make employers more receptive to joining in and streamlining their own processes.
• There will undoubtedly be some requirements that employers won’t compromise on. But in the face of an indefinite labor shortage, I bet that pared-down hiring is here to stay. That’s good news for workers without college degrees or those facing other barriers to getting hired--and frustrating news for some of the people with the degrees, who will probably start questioning if they even needed them.