s a fourth-year student set to graduate into an uncertain and dynamic world of work, I—like many others in my generation—may need to reinvent myself more than seven times throughout my career. Instead of preparing for and staying in a relatively linear progression, many of us emerging professionals will need to adapt to roles that do not yet exist, while frequently learning and “unlearning” along the way. Despite these projections, narrow hiring pipelines, and largely-unchanged educational institutions have led to systems that cater to a specific subset of the population while further fueling the skills dissonance between higher education and work.
As I heard echoed throughout the Global Talent Summit, it is ultimately these systems that are in need of radical restructuring or circumnavigating, especially as we think about how to rebuild in a post-COVID-19 world. Even the best EdTech products cannot bridge the digital divide, and diverse candidates in biased hiring pipelines would not achieve true representation—in other words, we’re only as good as the quality of our underlying systems.
This idea inevitably led us to more questions; How do we actually make our systems more equitable? Should we focus on bottom-up or top-down initiatives? What feedback loops are most critical? While a 90-minute session is only enough time to scratch the surface on these nuanced topics, I realized that collectively arriving at these questions is a critical step towards more actionable outcomes. Listening to each panelist chime in about the tangible things they are building in response made me hopeful that our thoughts wouldn’t just remain in the session, but would continue to be a catalyst for action going forward.
At the end of the session, I was also left to ponder on new questions. Stemming from the contributions of multiple panelists, I’ve been thinking about how we might identify and amplify the voices that were “not in the room” and view equity as a necessary lens to reimagine our systems, rather than viewing it as an add-on.
As I wrap up my time at Minerva and transition to the workforce, I’ll continue to reflect on these insights and bring more individuals into these conversations with the hope that, ultimately, our dynamic environment becomes one full of opportunities rather than barriers.
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Overhauling Systemic Hiring Practices
October 16, 2020
A
s a fourth-year student set to graduate into an uncertain and dynamic world of work, I—like many others in my generation—may need to reinvent myself more than seven times throughout my career. Instead of preparing for and staying in a relatively linear progression, many of us emerging professionals will need to adapt to roles that do not yet exist, while frequently learning and “unlearning” along the way. Despite these projections, narrow hiring pipelines, and largely-unchanged educational institutions have led to systems that cater to a specific subset of the population while further fueling the skills dissonance between higher education and work.
As I heard echoed throughout the Global Talent Summit, it is ultimately these systems that are in need of radical restructuring or circumnavigating, especially as we think about how to rebuild in a post-COVID-19 world. Even the best EdTech products cannot bridge the digital divide, and diverse candidates in biased hiring pipelines would not achieve true representation—in other words, we’re only as good as the quality of our underlying systems.
This idea inevitably led us to more questions; How do we actually make our systems more equitable? Should we focus on bottom-up or top-down initiatives? What feedback loops are most critical? While a 90-minute session is only enough time to scratch the surface on these nuanced topics, I realized that collectively arriving at these questions is a critical step towards more actionable outcomes. Listening to each panelist chime in about the tangible things they are building in response made me hopeful that our thoughts wouldn’t just remain in the session, but would continue to be a catalyst for action going forward.
At the end of the session, I was also left to ponder on new questions. Stemming from the contributions of multiple panelists, I’ve been thinking about how we might identify and amplify the voices that were “not in the room” and view equity as a necessary lens to reimagine our systems, rather than viewing it as an add-on.
As I wrap up my time at Minerva and transition to the workforce, I’ll continue to reflect on these insights and bring more individuals into these conversations with the hope that, ultimately, our dynamic environment becomes one full of opportunities rather than barriers.
