A New Kind of Tech Job Emphasizes Skills, Not a College Degree
As the United States struggles with how to match good jobs to the two-thirds of adults who do not have a four-year college degree, his experience
shows how a worker’s skills can be emphasized over traditional hiring filters like college degrees, work history and personal references.
The TechHire program, she said, could be “a doorway to a good-paying job, which is everything here.”
Ms. Clark made it through online screening tests and an interview and got into the program.
“We desperately need to revive a second route to the middle class for people without four-year college degrees, as manufacturing once was,”
said Robert Reich, a labor secretary in the Clinton administration who is now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
“That’s what I needed.”
Mr. Bridges represents a new but promising category in the American labor market: people working in so-called new-collar or middle-skill jobs.
The program’s career coaches also emphasized the so-called soft skills of speaking concisely, working cooperatively
and attending industry and professional gatherings to meet people, Mr. Gallegos said.