Innovating for Diversity

CHAPTER 6Looking Beyond Traditional Talent Sources for “Hard to Find” Roles

In recent years we have seen a trend of companies reconsidering the need for college degrees across a number of entry-level roles. As the labor market tightened, hiring managers reevaluated job descriptions to assess skills most relevant to performing required tasks. Waiting to find “unicorns” who met countless requirements—many “nice to have” but not essential—meant jobs remained opened while existing staff risked burn-out after picking up the slack.

This chapter investigates how visionaries at two leading companies—Northrop Grumman and Tessco—took the idea of hiring talent with non-traditional backgrounds a step further. Each innovated new systems for identifying, training, and career-pathing high-potential, diverse talent from unexpected sources. Each has experienced success beyond what they and their colleagues thought possible.

Key Concept: Identifying and hiring candidates based on skills and potential, rather than degrees, can unlock entirely new sources of exceptionally creative and highly motivated talent. Doing so often requires a level of risk-taking, trust, and leadership to build systems that supplement the traditional college recruitment and hiring process.

Northrop Grumman and Tessco: Shifting Long-Standing Perceptions of Who Can Succeed

In this chapter we'll explore how leaders at two companies in very different industry sectors successfully challenged and changed systems to enable ...