A Year in Review: Rising with the STARs

Tearing the Paper Ceiling and Launching STARs into 2023

An increasing demand for technology skills and an urgent need to address long-standing biases in the hiring process have pushed employers and policymakers to develop new strategies to build a stronger, more resilient, and more inclusive labor market.

Thankfully, there’s a lot of progress to report. And as an STARs-centric organization that works for and alongside STARs — the 70+ million workers Skilled Through Alternative Routes — STAR voices, insights, and leadership have been at the center of it all.

This year, Opportunity@Work doubled down on raising awareness of the talent and expertise STARs bring to the workforce, launching major new initiatives at the local and national level, and innovating new ways to rewire the labor market with STARs in our STARs Studio.

With the support of a growing network of partners, we continued our efforts to create more opportunities to translate learning into earning by meeting employers’ business objectives, while providing skilled, diverse workers access to the types of quality jobs that promote economic mobility.

Below is a brief report out on our efforts in 2022:

Tearing the Paper Ceiling: A Campaign to Connect STARs & Employers

• This fall, we collaborated with the Ad Council and Ogilvy to bring together more than 50 corporate and nonprofit organizations to raise awareness of and champion more inclusive, skills-based hiring practices. The national public service advertising campaign — tested and designed alongside STARs — kicked off with a launch event at LinkedIn’s New York City offices in the Empire State Building to acknowledge the untapped labor force of 70+ million STARs. STARs Advisory Chair LaShana Lewis joined campaign parters at the event to share her story and inspire attendees Tear the Paper Ceiling. Companies such as Accenture, Chevron, and Google, among others, have already signed a pledge to hire STARs, and many are already taking action: IBM, for instance, has pledged to remove the four-year degree requirement for half of their U.S. job listings.

Stellarworx: Matching Skilled Talent to In-Demand Jobs

• Stellarworx, Opportunity@Work’s talent matching platform for STARs, which is powered by SkyHive’s AI technology, increased its employer enrollment from 67 to 150 employers this year (a 124% increase since 2021). This year we removed geographic restrictions and opened Stellarworx to STARs, employers, and talent developers across the country while accelerating our work in key markets like Washington, D.C., the greater Los Angeles metro area, the San Francisco Bay Area, and most recently the state of Maryland and Houston, Texas. Companies including Accenture, Amazon, Aon, Live Nation, Okta, and Workday have already hired STARs to fill key roles using Stellarworx, and our work was featured in The Wall Street Journal, sharing the story of a STAR who used Stellarworx to access a new career pathway.

Building State & Local Partnerships

• In March of this year, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan announced that thousands of state job openings will no longer require a four-year degree for consideration. The State of Maryland employs more than 38,000 individuals, and half of those roles could substitute relevant experience and training for a bachelor’s degree requirement. According to the Maryland Dept. of Labor, there has been a 41% increase in STARs hired year-over-year between May and August of this year. Over 300 state jobs are already listed on Stellarworx, Opportunity@Work’s talent marketplace for STARs.
• In mid-November, Opportunity@Work and the Greater Houston Partnership’s UpSkill Houston joined forces to connect STARs to in-demand jobs in the Houston metro area. Skilled workers can now use Stellarworx to find quality “gateway jobs,” or roles that don’t require a bachelor’s degree, but open the door to higher-paying jobs that build on a worker’s existing skill sets.

Spotlighting and Rising with STARs

• Opportunity@Work’s head of research, Papia Debroy, connected with Steve Lohr of the New York Times to outline the barriers STARs face to accessing the middle class.
• New research from Opportunity@Work’s Insights team outlined in Spotlight on Black STARs found that Black workers without bachelor’s degrees are disproportionately excluded from the job pathways that lead to middle- and high-wage jobs. As reported by Olivia Rockeman in Bloomberg, we’ve found that six in 10 Black workers are STARs, and more than half of Black STARs are concentrated in just 25 roles, including home health aides, customer service representatives, and sales supervisors.

Opportunity@Work in the News

Throughout the year, our leadership and work has been featured as reporters pay increasing attention to the need for new approaches to hiring and training. Here are a few highlights:

• Ryan Roslansky, the CEO of LinkedIn, joined Byron to share their perspectives on how skills-based hiring can lead to the creation of more diverse and future-proof teams.
• Bridgette Gray spoke with The Wall Street Journal about our efforts on behalf of STARs using Stellarworx:
• Blue-Collar Workers Make the Leap to Tech Jobs, No College Degree Necessary
• Employers Rethink Need for College Degrees in Tight Labor Market
• Byron Auguste spoke with The Wall Street Journal about how skills-based hiring benefits STARs and helps employers access and hire skilled talent.
• Julie Elberfeld had a busy year, penning op-eds in both Fortune and Fast Company that deconstruct the myths behind the “tech talent gap.”
• Kelcey Reed collaborated with Mohan Reddy at SkyHive to explain how artificial intelligence-powered HR software, like Stellarworx, can reduce bias in the hiring process.
• Meghan McCarty Carino at Marketplace profiled a STAR who found her way to her dream career as a filmmaker through Year Up’s training program.
• The Washington Post acknowledged a growing number of states like Colorado and Maryland that have successfully removed degree requirements from state job postings.
• The launch of the Tear the Paper Ceiling Campaign also shaped the news cycle, including a piece in Fast Company about the growing coalition of employers that are ditching four-year degree requirements.

As we look ahead to 2023, we will continue to expand our state, city, and employer partnerships in our effort to “tear the paper ceiling” that holds back millions of workers from accessing the gateway jobs that lead to fulfilling career pathways.

Organizations, employers, STARs and other individuals can join the movement by visiting TearThePaperCeiling.org to share their stories, sign a pledge to support STARs and learn more about skills-based hiring practices.

This blog post was written by Cheston McGuire, Media & Public Affairs Director at Opportunity@Work.