Skills-First Workforce
Initiative

Employer-Led Framework for Skills-First Practice

View Skills-First Hiring Resources

Brought to you by

The Burning Glass Institute

Standardized skill profiles for 9 common jobs

Having a shared language, or taxonomy, for skills can help employers across different businesses and industries. Some of the nation’s largest employers have worked together to create shared skills profiles starting with these jobs representing over 11 million U.S. workers.

Our Skill Profile Framework

Top Skills

What should employers be hiring for when looking for candidates in this role? What are employers hiring for today, and what terminology can be used to describe these skills in job ads and assessments? Our resources can show employers which skills are critical for a given role, based on real hiring activity in the market.

Prevailing Market Trends

In the hiring market for each job, what skills are increasingly sought after? What skills are falling out of use? And what do nationwide trends tell us about changes in demand for these skills? We use publicly-available data to show which skills are on the rise, and which are declining, across each of our roles.

Shared Skill Definitions

Logistics skills are different for a Warehouse Manager than they are for a Retail Salesperson—we've created clear definitions of how each skill is used in a role, for easier assessment and comparison.

Proficiency Standards

What does it mean to have basic, intermediate, or advanced proficiency in a given skill? Each employer may have different measures of proficiency—we've created simple standards that can be used to translate  across different employers.

About the Skills-First Workforce Initiative

Promoting mobility for American workers

This effort comes as more employers embrace a skills-first approach to hiring that values workers’ full set of skills and experiences rather than focusing primarily on proxies like a college degree. This kind of approach can help widen talent pools at a time when unemployment is low yet there are more open jobs than unemployed workers.

This work is the result of a first-of-its-kind collaboration some of America's largest employers, led by the Burning Glass Institute and convened by Walmart, to align on a shared language for skills and to promote mobility for American workers. Participating firms co-created each skill taxonomy with the goal of cross-recognizing skills and learning across companies.

Contact

For questions, press inquiries, or to join future phases of this initiative, please contact us!

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