School of Life gets boost as Trump set to ask employers to prioritize skills over degrees
President Donald Trump is likely to sign an executive order on Friday, June 26, where he will direct employers to prioritize the applicants' skills over university degrees while making recruitments. With his order coming into force, the federal government will take a new direction while making new hirings, The Associated Press reported. According to sources, senior presidential adviser Ivanka Trump has asked the federal government to re-strategize its hiring order. The federal government employs more than two million civilian workers. Ivanka is also the co-chair of the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board.
We're modernizing federal hiring: Ivanka Trump
“We are modernizing federal hiring to find candidates with the relevant competencies and knowledge, rather than simply recruiting based on degree requirements," AP quoted the 38-year-old as saying in a statement. "We encourage employers everywhere to take a look at their hiring practices and think critically about how initiatives like these can help diversify and strengthen their workforce." According to Ivanka, encouraging the skillsets for jobs will broaden the workforce and improve it through being more inclusive, Fox News reported.
"Americans are eager to get to work but they need our help," Wilbus Ross, commerce secretary and the board’s other co-chair, told AP. The stress on skills though doesn’t mean the White House is doing away with degree requirements altogether. It will stress skills in those jobs where having a degree is less important.
The Office for Personnel Management will execute the new recruitment directive to bring more Americans back into the workforce quickly. March and April witnessed massive job losses because of the coronavirus shutdown before the market saw an unexpected rebound in May when 2.5M jobs were gained. Also the unemployment rate went down to 13.3 percent from 14.7 percent in April. However, while the Trump administration was happy with the experts' forecast of darker days failing to an extent, overall job openings were still lower than normal and the trillions that the government gave out in assistance to support the economy are also likely to end by the end of July.
Private firms also encouraged to follow new guidelines
Realizing that restarting the economy is the only way forward, the Trump administration is now stressing on the skill-based recruitment. Private firms have also been encouraged to follow the new guideline and companies like IBM have already taken up similar initiatives. Last year, it reportedly hired 15 percent of its workforce from non-traditional backgrounds, emphasizing more on skills than education. The strategy is aimed at recruiting candidates from underprivileged areas who could not afford to get higher degrees, it was said.
It was learned that the workforce advisory board is likely to announce details of a private-sector ad campaign led by firms such as Apple, IBM and the non-profit Ad Council to boost alternate pathways into the workforce besides education, AP added. The Trump administration has also decided to temporarily suspend the entry of certain alien workers to the US to free up jobs in an economy reeling from the pandemic even though a number of business houses have opposed the move. A presidential proclamation was issued on June 22 extending a ban on green cards issued outside the US till the end of 2020 and putting many temporary work visas under freeze, including the H-1B.