Navigating Skills-First Strategies in the New Year

On January 23, the Volcker Alliance joined Opportunity@Work and Jobs for the Future in presenting the webinar Navigating Skills-First Strategies in the New Year, a discussion of the progress made for skills-first strategies in 2024 and the strategies our organizations are undertaking in 2025 to advance its implementation. Taylor Magg, director of Workforce Policy at Jobs for the Future, and Blair Corcoran de Castillo, vice president of STARs Policy at Opportunity@Work, provided an overview of how skills-first hiring has already seen buy in from 26 states and promising executive orders from both the Trump and Biden administrations.

Volcker Alliance senior director of talent and strategy, Peter Morrissey, shared the lessons learned from the beginning phase of Transformers in the Public Sector, an initiative that provides state government leaders from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, and Louisiana with targeted support focused on refining and implementing skills-first talent strategies from Opportunity@Work and the Volcker Alliance. Nicole Tucker, chief operating officer, Louisiana State Civil Service, spoke to her state’s intentional and thoughtful next steps including moving to a competency-based framework and training hiring managers to effectively identify and evaluate candidates’ skills.

Watch the full webinar here.