Join Us in Accelerating the Skills First Movement
The Center for a Skills First Future helps employers put skills at the center of hiring and advancement—unlocking talent, fueling growth, and creating opportunity. We provide the tools, guidance, and shared language to make skills-first practices the standard.
Skills Action Planner
Skills Action Planner
Evaluate your organization’s progress in adopting a skills-first approach. Our interactive tool helps you identify strengths, gaps, and actionable steps to implement a skills-based approach effectively.
Resource Library
Resource Library
Access research, tools, and employer examples to implement and sustain skills-first talent strategies across the employee lifecycle.
Skills First Credential
Skills First Credential
Demonstrate expertise in skills-based workforce strategies. Equip yourself with the tools to drive impact across hiring, development, and retention.
Vendor Database
Vendor Database
Find vetted solutions and community support for skills-first implementations—from sourcing and assessment to upskilling and mobility.
Hear from Taylor Dunne, San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation
Taylor Dunne of the San Diego Regional EDC shares how skills-first hiring gains real traction—by starting from within. In this spotlight, she emphasizes the power of aligning HR and technical teams, identifying internal champions, and rethinking how organizations recognize and value skills beyond traditional proxies.
Hear From Rose Sikder, OKTA
Rose Sikder, of OKTA explains how a skills-first approach unlocks potential in today’s workforce. In this inspiring message, she shares how leading with skills—not assumptions—helps businesses find untapped talent, support upward mobility, and future-proof their teams.
Hear from Steven Flenory, WB Games
Steven Flenory of WB Games shares why skills-first hiring isn’t just the future—it’s the now. In this short spotlight, he highlights how prioritizing skills over outdated proxies helps employers tap into overlooked talent, improve retention, and build stronger teams.
Hear from Josh Tarr of Workday
Josh Tarr of Workday shares how their internal gig program sparked a skills-first transformation. By focusing on real skills over résumés, Workday saw faster hiring, better candidate experiences, and stronger acceptance rates. His advice? Start small, use your data, and make skills a company-wide priority—not just an HR project.
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19x
Removing degree requirements unlocks 19x more candidates (JFF, 2023)
30%
Skills-first hiring reduces cost-per-hire by 30% (SHRM, 2023)
42%
Companies adopting skills- first decrease turnover by 42% (McKinsey, 2023)
Featured Resource
A resource, framework, or playbook that helps organizations gather, analyze, and apply labor market data to inform workforce and hiring strategies. These guides are commonly used by HR professionals, education providers, policymakers, and workforce boards to navigate the evolving labor market, understand emerging skills, and support data-informed decision-making in hiring, upskilling, and strategic workforce planning. It typically includes:
- Real-time labor market data sources (e.g., job postings, skills taxonomies, employment trends)
- Taxonomies of skills and occupations
- Analytical methods (e.g., AI-powered skills matching, skills gap analysis)
- Best practices for aligning talent supply with demand
- Case studies from companies and regions, or tools for making informed decisions about hiring, training, and workforce planning
Examples:
- The World Economic Forum’s Talent Intelligence Platform (TIP) Playbook. This playbook outlines how to build a skills-based approach to workforce planning, including mapping current skills and supply and demand using taxonomies like ESCO and O*NET; and integrating skills data into HR systems.
- Lightcast Talent Intelligence Playbook. Helps organizations assess the supply and demand for specific skills in local or national labor markets; identify skill gaps in their workforce; forecast talent needs based on emerging trend; and inform workforce development strategies such as training programs or recruitment efforts.
Alternative Terms:
- Workforce Analytics Guide: Emphasizes the use of data science in HR and planning
- Labor Market Intelligence Toolkit (LMI Toolkit): Public-sector term for data resources on jobs, skills, and trends
- Talent Market Report: Shorter, insight-driven documents focused on workforce trends
- Strategic Workforce Planning Framework: Broader strategy guide that includes talent intelligence as one part
- Skills Intelligence Framework: Focuses specifically on skill-level data and emerging needs
- Skills Taxonomy User Guide: A guide to using structured skill lists like O*NET or ESCO
Founding Investors
Founding Partners
