Contributors:

Beyond degrees: Embracing skills-based hiring models in 2025

Contributors:

Michelle Hainsworth
Managing Director, Skills Creation, AMS

Sailesh Hota
Practice Director, Everest Group

Jim Sykes
Chief Operation Officer, AMS

Shlomo Weiss
Chief Operating Officer, Gloat

A new AI-fueled future of work will require unique and up-to-the minute skills for new and current employees.

From deep data analysis to emotional intelligence, AMS can empower your TA team to find candidates with the skills your workforce needs for years to come.

Talent acquisition leaders are facing a new landscape of machine learning, a chaotic job market and looming fiscal challenges, their mission remains the same: Find candidates with the right skills for the open positions inside forward-thinking organizations.

The need for skilled workers has never been more insatiable but talent leaders are asking themselves the same questions in this climate: What are the skills that organizations need now and what skills will they need in five years’ time? In this article, we will explore the most urgently needed skills, what capabilities and expertise will be needed in the next two to three years and how AMS can help.

Mastering skills remains top of mind for talent acquisition teams despite being a hot topic for nearly a decade. According to Jim Sykes, Chief Operating Officer for AMS, the “vast majority” of organizations are considering how they can adapt to a skills-led hiring framework as other firms are still lagging behind in these efforts.

“”Whilst the vast majority of talent professionals are considering how they’re addressing the skills gap in their candidate pools, very few have started on that journey and very few would say that they are necessarily leading the way to date. It’s very much a journey for most organizations,”
says Jim Sykes, Chief Operating Officer for AMS.

Why the foot dragging on skills? In short, measuring and assessing technical and human skills remains a hugely complex challenge.

Sykes gives insight into how talent acquisition leaders are thinking about skills. “If you take the broadest aspirations that organizations have, which is how do we come up with a methodology through which we can hire, train, develop, progress and redeploy talent for existing roles and future roles, that is a broad and challenging mission. Most organizations are struggling to define what it means for them and how they go about starting this skills journey,” he says. Sykes adds that while there’s little shortage of software vendors that claim to offer a skills solution for talent acquisition professionals, many software providers only help with one element of that skills-hiring challenge as opposed to all elements of that challenge.

Global research firm Everest Group agrees that the future of the talent economy is skills-based. That said, amid the skills hype, HR, TA, and business leaders often overlook the fact that transitioning to a skills-based organization is a marathon, not a sprint.

“Success starts with building enterprise-wide skill intelligence and embedding those insights into core talent decisions. To achieve meaningful, long-term outcomes, leaders must embrace a sustainable execution roadmap that ensures consistency and impact over time,”

says Sailesh Hota, Practice Director for Everest Group.

Skills Creation, formally known as TalentLab, is a service where AMS professionals find and vet candidates who have aptitude or adjacent skills to the open role, and they then train or reskill those individuals to place them in jobs requiring critical skills that weren’t readily available in the market.

“They’ll look at people who haven’t yet got the skills, but have aptitude and motivation to develop the necessary skills, whether they are experienced individuals, or those starting out in their career journey, AMS Skills Creation invest in those individuals to help them into otherwise unattainable roles, bridging the gap and helping our clients to fill their critical skills,”

says Michelle Hainsworth, Managing Director of AMS Skills Creation.

Skills Creation looks for those skills that are either difficult to fill because there isn’t enough talent in the external market, the location might not have a specifically skilled population or there’s a lack of diversity in those particular roles. “Skills Creation also identifies people who have aptitude, and we train them and we build those skills,” says Hainsworth.

Inside the hot tech skills

What skills will your organization and your talent teams need in the coming years? Although there are some obvious answers, the reason they will be vital may be surprising.

AI. Right now, AI can help more broadly than most talent acquisition professionals would realize, says Sykes. At the moment, teams are using generative AI in relatively tactical and non-disruptive use cases for more transactional and mundane tasks such as scheduling interviews, drafting questions, providing transcripts of candidate interviews, and optimizing job descriptions and job adverts. But AI is capable of doing far more today and will be capable of doing significantly more at the end of this year, let alone the end of 2026. Talent leaders need to have a strategy for how they will adopt AI in recruiting, and they need to be focused as a leader on bottom-up and top-down adoption of this new tool.

Sykes explains that the bottom-up use of AI consists of tactical use cases in which recruiters rely on widely-available tools such as ChatGPT to enable them to be better at their jobs. One of the earliest use cases AMS had with AI was utilizing generative AI to refine emails that clients would send to prospective candidates via LinkedIn. Sources doing that on their own initiative improved their InMail hit rates. “It’s a great example of a bottom-up innovation that is simple to do and relies on publicly available and zero cost Chat GPT licenses for transformational tasks,” says Sykes.

Data analysis: Organizations often receive thousands of resumes and job applications. But can teams efficiently sift through this vast amount of data to identify the right candidates? For example, your next hire might currently work at a competitor or even within your own organization. Data analysis will be essential in uncovering these hidden talent pools.

“Data is fundamental to everything we do today,” says Hainsworth. “In the world of AI, we have access to unprecedented amounts of information, but we need to interpret that data correctly to drive meaningful outcomes. Without analyzing the data and asking the ‘so what,’ we won’t know which actions to take or which direction to pursue. So we should be using data deliberately to inform targeted hiring strategies and select the right candidates.”

“It’s important to consider what types of roles we’ve been hiring for and how those trends are shifting,” Hainsworth explains.

“By aggregating data across all our clients, we can identify trends, gaps in demand versus supply, and emerging skill shortages. This insight helps us understand the evolving skill sets needed and where organizations should focus their reskilling efforts, now as well as in the medium term.”

To capitalize on these opportunities, HR teams will need training in data analysis skills. “The more organizations invest in developing their people’s analytical capabilities, the higher the likelihood that they’ll retain top talent,” Hainsworth emphasizes.

Blockchain: This isn’t only for crypto bros who are day trading on their smartphones. Your talent team will need to use this cutting-edge technology which is basically, a transparent “digital notebook of transactions“ that people can view but not erase or edit old pages. Some proponents believe that it can offer instant verification of candidates and help decentralize talent pools. While not in widespread use, more ambitious recruiters could rely on blockchain for filling roles.

Along with security, users of blockchain won’t need to rely on third-party AI tools or large language models to achieve results. Sykes says that while blockchain will not change the nature of sourcing candidates, it will improve the utilization of AI in the hiring process and help TA teams to ask questions using normal everyday language.

Internal skills marketplace. One skills survey found that employees reported having a mere eight skills related to their profession when they actually possessed more than 20. This is why an internal skills marketplace is more critical than ever. Sadly, an established and properly outfitted internal marketplace is still a rarity in even the most forward-thinking organizations.

“At the root of all of this, we have to ask why we are focusing on this move towards skills? It’s because there are profound shortages of talent and skills in the world today, and that problem is only going to be exasperated with declining population rates,” says Sykes. “Also, because the changing nature of skills means that you’re going to hire someone for a sales role today, and within five years, 40% of the skills that we need them to have will be different. That’s why we’re going on this journey.”

It’s do or die, according to Sykes. “If we’re not nurturing those skills when someone’s joined the organization and we’re not able to rehire them internally with the right skills, then we’re failing,” he says.

The technology for an internal skills marketplace requires maintenance, buy-in from leaders, and plenty of information, advises Hainsworth. And add this to the hiring manager’s frustrations with the TA process. “So many times I hear it’s easier to leave and get another job than it is to find a job internally because managers are hanging onto their resource,” she says.

Don’t forget critical human skills

Assessing skills. Talent teams will need even more help in assessing the skills that a candidate possesses and the role requires. AMS’s Sykes believes that AI will be indispensable in matching the right skilled candidates to the job opening.

And as job roles and position requirements evolve, be honest, are you using the same skills you had at your first job? It also helps determine if your candidate has the mental flexibility to adapt and mature with their new role. This is where AI comes in again.

“We can assess for that,” says Sykes. “If you were a very forward-thinking talent leader, I suggest that you start asking how do I ensure that every single person I hire has a high level of cognitive dexterity, so that as my organization goes through increasing amounts of change, my employees go on the journey.”

Talent leaders need to ask not only if the candidate possesses the right skills but are open to game changers such as AI and other disruptive innovations as well as external factors that have an impact. “If we’re skills focused, we must be able to assess those skills and measure such attributes as cognitive dexterity and change readiness,” says Sykes.

Emotional intelligence. Hot on the heels of technological and business skills, talent teams must be prepared to measure so-called EQ or interpersonal skills, especially for leadership roles. While it’s easier to test for hard skills such as coding and specific business tasks, soft skills are even more vital in an AI-powered workplace.

“Within the field of talent acquisition, we are automating the more transactional parts of people’s roles, and we want them to be able to take the time they’re saving and reinvest that time in the candidate experience. They can also reinvest that time in advising hiring managers,” says Sykes.

This means that the team’s ability to have a convincing and realistic conversation with hiring managers will also require what Sykes calls “psychometric assessments.” He adds that this will become an increasingly important aspect of any business.

Adaptability & resilience. Change is as constant as it is difficult to navigate in the workplace so measuring a candidate’s ability to adapt and thrive is more important than ever. Can your teams adapt as well or are they stuck in the past?
Sykes points to an AMS client who needed specific skills for color matching at a cosmetics company. They eventually hired an individual from the automotive industry where color matching is a vital skill. “They found that they could successfully hire people from the automotive industry to work in this wildly different industry because skills are a great enabler,” he says.

Also, looking for skills from different business sectors could save employees from burnout by giving them a fresh start with the skills they already possess. “It’s not just another car shop. They can actually work someplace different and learn something new,” he says.

Gig & project-based hiring. Not every employee wants to be a company person. Finding and nurturing skilled workers will be a greater challenge in the future as companies look to their budgets when hiring with greater scrutiny. Contingent workers also provide flexibility for businesses which allows workers to showcase their skills before making a full-time commitment, however Hainsworth believes we still have some work to do to overcome the challenges of thinking about talent more holistically, rather than in traditional category silo’s. When we think about talent holistically, skills become the common currency, and the organisations that are focussing on what candidates can do and learn are accelerating the shift to a skills based labour market, where ongoing active learning and adaptability to AI are key.

“Well, AI can help with everything,” she says. She adds that despite projections showing the continued rise in project-based hiring, talent teams still struggle to think about talent holistically.

“If I’m a hiring manager and I need to hire someone, the starting point for that process is either I have to ask for a contractor or ask for permission to hire someone on a permanent basis,” she says. “The fact that that’s the trigger point for getting any support means that no one is going to holistically look at my requirements and say, these are the skills that you’re looking for.”

In the near future, AI will assess the responsibilities and the tasks in a better, smarter and more efficient way. AI will be able to prioritize these needs for the best source of talent whether it is a permanent hire or a freelance worker. “Before we even get to the mechanics of how do you find that person, AI is assessing the requirement and triaging that need by the end of the next year, without a doubt,” says Sykes.

Conclusion: Skills have the final say

Organizations that continue to struggle with their skills hiring journey should not lose hope. AMS, and its Skills Creation, can help bring candidates with the right skills with practical experience, often from diverse backgrounds, to help them achieve success.

The future of work isn’t just about filling roles—it’s about unlocking the full potential of every individual through a skills-first approach, according to Shlomo Weiss, COO at Gloat. AI is transforming how TA leaders assess, match, and develop talent, enabling organizations to build more dynamic and resilient workforces.

“Companies that embrace this shift—leveraging AI, skills intelligence, and agile talent models—won’t just future-proof their workforce,” says Weiss.

“They’ll also drive measurable business outcomes, from increasing productivity and reducing costs to mitigating workforce risks and staying ahead in an evolving market.”

“Every organization is in a different place, but most forward-thinking CHROs are on that journey thinking about the future and in particular because the value of a business is so dependent on the quality of people.” says Hainsworth. “If it improves the bottom line and you get the best talent, your business will grow exponentially.”

written by Phil Albinus in partnership with the Catalyst Editorial Board.

With contribution from:

Michelle Hainsworth

Managing Director, Skills Creation, AMS

Sailesh Hota

Practice Director, Everest Group

Jim Sykes

Chief Operation Officer, AMS

Shlomo Weiss

Chief Operating Officer, Gloat

Solution summary:

View the story

Skills-based approaches in action

Real-world case studies

Introduction

Everyone’s talking about skills-based organizations—but turning that vision into reality is where the real challenge lies. Organizations know that by prioritizing skills over titles and degrees, they can enhance quality of hire, maximize value, and drive real business outcomes.

This paper explores the diverse application of skills-based approaches, showing how organizations transitioned from concept to results. We hope it will inspire talent leaders to lead the shift to a skills-powered organization.

If you’re looking to stay ahead in a fast-changing world, these stories demonstrate what’s possible when you put skills-based approaches into action with the right partner by your side.

Use Case 1

Increasing diversity applications

A leading organization in the pharmaceutical industry sought to enhance its commitment to diversity and inclusion by shifting to a skills-first hiring approach. As part of its broader DE&I strategy, the company aimed to attract a more diverse talent pool by reducing reliance on degree requirements, expanding opportunities for underrepresented talent, and reinforcing its inclusive hiring initiatives to drive more diverse applications.

Solution summary:

We partnered with this organization to design and implement a multi-channel recruitment marketing campaign tailored to their goals. The initiative began with comprehensive market research and employee interviews to gain insights into the available talent pool, as well as the company’s unique strengths and challenges. Leveraging these findings, we crafted an inclusive messaging and creative platform that emphasized the company’s skills-first approach, inclusive culture and broad career opportunities. The campaign was deployed across various channels, including outdoor media near competitors, paid search, programmatic display, podcast ads and social media. All media directed candidates to targeted landing pages designed to convert job seekers.

Business impact:

1300% growth in landing page traffic, jumping from 180 to an average of 2,500 weekly website visitors during the campaign.
1,600 apply-clicks generated from digital media channels in the first year, driving campaign success and leading to renewals and expansion across multiple U.S. markets.

This campaign exemplifies how a skills-first strategy can drive measurable impact, helping us reach diverse talent pools and strengthen our commitment to inclusion.”

Talent Leader
Global Pharmaceutical Company

Use Case 2

Increasing skills data collection

A global Pharma and Life Sciences leader invested in skills technology to empower its workforce to input and manage their skills data, enabling a skills-based approach to workforce planning and internal mobility. Successful adoption required more than just technology – it demanded effective change management practices to shift mindsets and embed skills-first thinking across internal teams.

Solution summary:

We partnered with the organization to drive adoption and engagement, ensuring widespread workforce embrace of the new skills technology through a structured, strategic approach:

Diagnosed adoption barriers and developed a targeted change management strategy in collaboration with the company and tech provider.
Designed training modules, user guides, and an efficient support system to streamline onboarding and ensure smooth utilization.
Integrated skills-based conversations into hiring manager briefings, ensuring accurate skills data collection and effective matching.
Enabled talent teams to craft skills-driven job advertisements, reinforcing the new approach at every stage of hiring.
Tracked calibration rates and provided real-time feedback, ensuring continuous improvement in adoption and skills application.

Business impact:

The efforts delivered remarkable results: Achieved a 27% increase in global skills data collection—an impressive leap from the initial regional adoption rates of 5% to 32%, made possible through robust change management and strong workforce engagement.

This transformation not only streamlined our adoption process but fundamentally shifted our hiring managers’ mindset, enabling us to successfully transition to a skills-based organization.”

TA Leader
Pharma & Life Sciences Client

Use Case 3

57% reduction in time to hire

A multinational bank headquartered in London faced challenges scaling its tech hiring efforts to meet the demands of a competitive and complex talent market. The bank struggled to attract top tech talent and maintain their engagement throughout the hiring process, risking delays and missed opportunities in critical roles. Their strategic priority was to streamline processes and position the institution as a desirable destination for tech professionals.

Solution summary:

We partnered with the bank to transform its tech hiring approach through targeted initiatives:

Conducted a detailed analysis of 220 tech role profiles, identifying confusing job titles and consolidating them into four core skills essential for success.
Refreshed the employer value proposition (EVP) for tech hiring and collaborated with hiring managers to reframe the institution as a tech-driven business.
Developed new job postings and optimized hiring processes to attract top talent efficiently.
Created proactive sourcing strategies that brought an average of 50 qualified prospects to each hiring event.

Business impact:

The transformation delivered substantial improvements:

57% reduction in time-to-hire from an average of 65 days to approximately 28 days.
95% conversion rate of applicants to bench selection.
Increased diversity within candidate slates, enhancing the inclusivity of hiring efforts.

Our partnership not only transformed how we approach tech hiring but helped us position ourselves as a competitive player in the tech talent market. The results have been both impactful and inspiring.”

TA Leader
Multinational Bank

Use Case 4

Powering internal mobility

A European multinational Information Technology Services company faced a strategic need to restructure and transform its technical capabilities. As part of this transformation, they aimed to align their workforce with roles in their Digital Growth Networks (DGNs). This required significant upskilling and transitioning of a large proportion of their current workforce into new roles, reducing reliance on external recruitment.

Solution summary:

We partnered with the client to design and implement an internal mobility strategy focused on engagement and skill alignment:

Developed an interactive video assessment tool to help internal candidates understand DGNs and identify where their skills and interests would best align.
Established an Internal Mobility Team to assist in aligning employees to DGNs, provide coaching to managers and internal candidates, and increase platform utilization.
Enabled the team with tools to search profiles, shortlist employees for roles, and support candidates in identifying short-term project opportunities.
Focused on fostering meaningful skills-based conversations during role alignment, ensuring accurate matching and data-driven transitions.

Business impact:

This initiative delivered exceptional results:

Successfully reskilled the workforce to meet critical future skills demands.
Created a culture of employee engagement and career mobility, driving increased satisfaction and retention.
85% internal role fulfillment for DGN positions, reducing reliance on external

This approach not only ensured that we were future-ready but also reinforced our commitment to nurturing internal talent and fostering career growth within the organization.”

Business Leader
Multinational IT Services Company

Use Case 5

Expanding talent pools

An Investment Banking client operating across North America (NAM) and Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) faced challenges in meeting the demands of specialized roles within business units in multiple locations. The client sought to refine its hiring strategies to better identify skilled talent across industries, expand its talent pool, and remain competitive in a dynamic market.

Solution summary:

We partnered with the client to conduct a detailed analysis of talent pools using skills-based searches:

Identified relevant skill sets across diverse industries beyond Financial Services, expanding the pool of qualified candidates.
Analyzed top employers of relevant talent and assessed industry demand to understand the competitive landscape.
Provided insights into rapidly growing skills within the talent pool and recommended key terms to integrate into job descriptions, enhancing the effectiveness of outreach efforts.

Business impact:

This approach delivered significant results:

714% increase in the client’s accessible talent pool, growing from 2,011 to 17,100 skilled candidates.
Provided data that refined hiring strategies, informed demand planning, and supported location-specific workforce strategies.
Encouraged hiring managers to consider skilled talent from broader industries and backgrounds, enhancing the diversity and quality of their candidate pipeline.

Our collaboration shifted perspectives and opened new avenues for talent exploration, helping us uncover exceptional candidates and vastly expand our capabilities in this competitive market.”

TA Leader
Investment Banking Client

Impact recap and business case

These real-world results demonstrate a clear and repeatable pattern: skills-based approaches drive transformative outcomes. Organizations across industries have achieved measurable results, such as significantly faster hiring cycles and enhanced DEIB outcomes. Through expanded and diverse talent pools, stronger internal mobility that leverages existing workforce potential and improved quality of hire supports future business needs. These achievements extend well beyond HR and talent leaders – they directly support broader organizational goals such as scalability, workforce agility, and long-term growth.

The route to becoming a skills-powered organization is varied, as every organization is at a different stage of understanding, adoption, or execution of skills-based strategies. These case studies highlight the transformative potential of a skills-first approach – from faster hiring and improved diversity outcomes to enhanced internal mobility and measurable business impact. However, achieving these results requires tailored support that aligns with your unique challenges and goals.

Thinking about going skills-based? Top 3 considerations for talent leaders

1. Clarify your “why”
Understand why you’re adopting skills-based hiring. Link it to your organization’s challenges, desired talent outcomes, and business priorities.

2. Assess your toolkit
Leverage existing technologies with skills functionalities. Identify gaps and optimize tools already in use.

3. Learn and scale
Pinpoint areas where skills-based approaches have succeeded and amplify these learnings across the organization. Treat this as a business transformation.

Your partner for skills-based transformation

Early Stage – Strategic workshops help uncover risks and opportunities, build shared understanding, and align stakeholders around actionable priorities.
Mid-stage – Skills readiness diagnostics and targeted interventions deliver in-depth assessments, refined frameworks, and high-level roadmaps to scale skills-based hiring practices effectively.
Final Stage – AMS ensures a seamless transition by integrating technology, processes, and people-focused strategies to maximize impact.

From market intelligence to technology enablement, process optimization, and brand strategy, AMS offers customized solutions that address critical areas of the talent journey. Whether defining initial strategies or driving full-scale delivery, AMS’s deep expertise ensures measurable outcomes and sustainable success.

Wherever you are in your skills-based journey, we’ll help you lead the shift to skills-powered approaches.

Inspired by these stories?

Connect with AMS to make skills-based hiring a reality.

Let’s start today.

Wherever you are in your skills-based journey, we’ll help you lead the shift to skills-powered approaches.

Inspired by these stories?

Connect with AMS to make skills-based hiring a reality.

Let’s start today.

Heading

View the story

The workforce data playbook:

Cut costs, boost performance

Powering your extended workforce with better data

Extended workforces are becoming more mainstream thanks to their ability to give organisations flexibility, agility and access to instant expertise. It’s this adaptability which is also giving talent teams a headache when it comes to having a 360 degree view of their full contingent workforce. Multiple types of contract, a variety of internal stakeholders and disparate functional teams often mean a clear understanding of the scale and capability of this type of talent is difficult to understand.

But there is a better way.

Organisations who centralise workforce intelligence and build a solid data foundation are reporting a more robust understanding of skills gaps and capabilities, improved candidate and hiring manager experiences, as well as reducing costs.

The future?

An extended workforce strategy powered by AI and analytics driven by data put at the fingertips of the talent team.

And the journey to get there may be easier than you think.

Five steps to smarter decision-making with better intelligence

Define the outcomes you are trying to drive with your data. Do you have a particular skills gap which needs addressing or is it simply taking too long to find the right talent? Is reducing cost a key driver?

Agree the key data points which align to your outcomes. For example, if cost reduction is a primary objective, factors such as rates, assignment expenditures, and project completion time will play a defining role.

Recruitment and onboarding data is equally important to this process and can identify areas for improvement in your process. Number of CV’s per req, interview volume, time to offer, are all key areas to understand to optimise the performance of your extended worker strategy.

Define your parameters for continuous measurement enabling teams to report against specific SLA’s and outcomes. Manage costs and deliver improved value by understanding how your strategy is performing.

Benchmark against broader industry parameters. AMS’s deep partnerships across industries and categories, means we have access to a wealth of data. We show our clients how they compare from an efficiency and cost perspective in their industry – completely anonymised of course.

Josh Bersin Company research shows most businesses don’t have a clear view of their total contingent workforce, estimating between 10-40% but lacking real-time accuracy.

Better data can drive cost reductions of up to 20%

In a recent analysis of one client, comparing common job types across Managed Service Provider (MSP) and Statement of Work (SoW) populations, we found that when the same skill set was delivered through a 1-to-1 SoW engagement (one worker per SoW), the cost was approximately 20% higher than engaging the same worker via an MSP.

The reason? SoW engagements often lacked the same level of scrutiny applied to MSP rate cards and supplier terms—leading to inflated costs for identical work.

Five steps to bridging skills gap with extended workforce data

The extended workforce is a core part of organisational success and having access to key skills in this market is critical for future growth and planning. To maximise the potential at their fingertips, better data management can help map the skills you need to the skills you already have access to in your contingent population.

Consolidate all labour-based data into one data lake to assess skills gaps.

Use AI tools to group data across all engagement types.

Manage labour cost bases and workforce planning by deploying robust recruit-train-deploy progammes to have price competitive talent ready for when you need it.

Re-skill existing populations, with a clear view of the contractors who can support this up-skilling/re-skilling.

Consider both early careers and more experienced talent and use data to better understand skill set and intent.

IBM’s 2025 CEO Study highlights contingent workers as key to leading workforce strategies for the first time.

The role of AI in powering better workforce intelligence

AI and analytics provide powerful tools for workforce optimisation. By centralising and having clear site of your extended workforce data, you maximise the power of the AI you implement.

AI also prefers standard operating models, processes and access to information via integration but data sets AND consolidated data across all work segments is key before you can really benefit from AI.

When data and AI come together, their impact on talent strategy is powerful:

AI-assisted search is reducing the time taken to find candidates from 15 minutes to 30 seconds with AMS clients seeing a 75% reduction in time to hire through effective use of AI tools.
Real time spend analysis and optimisation reducing hiring costs.
Compliance and risk management improvements driven by centralization and consistency.
Diversity and inclusion when used ethically, reducing biased and unearthing harder to reach talent.
Better talent mobility in contingent labour by recycling skilled resource.
Automated processing with better outcomes and reduced costs.

Don’t get left behind

The workforce landscape has already shifted and understanding contingent labour and how this shapes overall talent availability is critical. Getting a better handle on your data and understanding the power of the skills already working with your organization could transform your results.

Our dedicated contingent workforce teams have deep expertise in driving the best outcomes for clients with AI driven insights and advanced analytics, putting you in control and maximising the impact of the talent available.

Talk to an AMS expert

As businesses and nations move towards net zero carbon emissions, employers are looking for a new breed of employees to tackle the climate challenge by 2050: A green collar workforce.

View the story

The rise of the green collar workforce

Contributors:

Sailesh Hota
Practice Director, Everest Group

David Ingleson
Sector Managing Director for Energy, Engineering and Industrials, AMS

Alain Proietti
Global Head of Talent Acquisition, Siemens Energy

As businesses and nations move towards net zero carbon emissions, employers are looking for a new breed of employees to tackle the climate challenge by 2050: A green collar workforce.

There’s good news and tough news for talent acquisition leaders whose mission it is to find job candidates with the in-demand skills for the coming 25 years. First the challenging news: According to market research giant Deloitte, more than 800 million jobs are vulnerable to the impact of climate change and the push towards net zero carbon emissions.

The good news is that a new breed of employee is emerging with the help of higher education, upskilling and a sense of purpose to fill these new roles and solve this dire dilemma.

Meet the green collar worker. While technologists focus on the latest innovations of AI and machine learning, this category of jobs could save the planet. A mixture of hands-on and intellectual positions, green collar jobs can range from blue collar, labor-intensive roles such as recycling and green energy installations to white-collar roles such as designing energy efficient systems, consulting and drafting sustainable policies.

These new roles are in high demand at the moment and experts foresee a day when many traditional roles will have a critical green-collar component.

Further research by Deloitte explains that this new breed of worker will transform how large enterprises and small companies will do business in the coming quarter century.
“A typical green collar worker can be an office worker or a manual laborer. It is not about the industry, location, or skills of a worker that makes them green collar — it’s about how decarbonization does (or doesn’t) influence their work and their skills,” according to the authors of the 2024 Deloitte report entitled “Work Toward Net Zero.”

As for the men and women who will fill these new roles, Deloitte’s analysts predict various changes in training and career development in the coming years. “Some existing occupations will significantly transform, others may only need to change at the margins, and entirely new ones will emerge as the green collar workforce shapes the future of work,” according to Deloitte.

AMS has not only recognized the need for a green collar workforce, the TA and recruitment leader is helping many savvy companies — such as Hitachi Energy, GE Vernova and Siemens Energy — to achieve their net zero goals with a new team of highly skilled, trained and motivated workers.

Rather than just confining the definition of green collar jobs to roles that are directly linked to the environmental sector, AMS believes the new green collar workforce is much broader than this narrow definition, according to David Ingleson, Sector Managing Director for Energy, Engineering and Industrials for AMS.

“Green collar roles can sit within any industry and sector of the economy with the key common characteristic being that the core function of the role is directed towards the goal of more sustainable practices,” he says. “This means that while a Wind Turbine Technician for a renewable energy company is clearly a green collar worker, so is a Sustainable Finance Analyst in the investment banking sector.”

If nations are to meet their 2050 net zero commitments, forward-thinking TA leaders will need to fill the roles of this unique sector in short order. Not being prepared for the impact of climate change will not be an acceptable excuse. There is a desperate need for people with these skills, says Ingleson.

What a green collar workforce means for TA leaders

Although they are new to the hiring landscape, green collar positions are just like any other new and emerging roles, and in a dynamic and constantly changing global economy, the world has shown that it is more than capable of changing to the required needs, says Ingleson.

“AMS has seen similar challenges as we moved from analogue to digital technologies and from manual tasks to automated tasks and these challenges have all been overcome,” he says. “Admittedly, we still have skills deficits in critical areas like technology but the green collar workforce is arguably more accessible than highly technical disciplines like cybersecurity or data science.”

Ingleson adds that the green collar workforce is made up of a range of skills in what could also be categorized as blue, gray and white collar roles but that the focus is simply on making the world more sustainable.

“It is for this reason that hiring for these roles should not be as challenging as we think it might be,” he says.

This vision of the future is shared by the global research giant, Everest Group. Sailesh Hota, Practice Director, points out:

“Government data show the global renewables workforce reached 16.2 million in 2023, and under just-transition policies, the UN and ILO project another 24 million green-economy jobs by 2030”.

Hota goes on to stress that, “green-collar talent will underpin climate-resilient supply chains, zero-carbon microgrids, and advanced carbon management platforms. For TA leaders, the choice is stark: build integrated upskilling engines now to develop the workforce that will power and sustain enterprises of tomorrow, or risk seeing that future delivered by more agile competitors.”

That said, finding, nurturing and recruiting new talent to fill these green collar jobs may need extra care and attention at first. On the plus side, a new generation of young and highly-educated job candidates is entering the workforce from high schools and universities and this population has a passion for addressing the climate change challenge. On the downside, TA leaders report that newer candidates often seek more lucrative jobs in non-green sectors such as tech and finance for their first choice of careers.

“Generation Z and Alpha are highly motivated to embark on careers with purpose, although the sectors in which green collar roles are more prevalent — the more traditional ‘green’ economy which is focused on the Energy, Engineering, Industrials and Utilities sectors — are at present deemed less attractive than the digital, technology and financial sectors,” says Ingleson. “Although green collar roles sit within these sectors, this leads us to a point where the emerging talent is in the main, being attracted to roles sitting outside the green collar workforce, despite these lofty aspirations around ‘purpose.’”

Notwithstanding this challenge, TA leaders should not lose sight of the benefits of hiring green collar workers. Ingleson says that this reality should be “a call to action” to all organizations in all sectors with a strong narrative on sustainability to tell their story in a compelling way.

“There’s plenty of potential in these jobs to be a part of change,” he says. “We need to sell that especially in our campus and early career recruiting efforts.”

A green collar upskilling opportunity

Green collar jobs are not just about young graduates and new workers entering the workforce for the first time; experienced employees with years on the job will benefit from this emerging job category.

“The climate crisis is upon us, and it will take all generations of talent to steer the planet towards a safer path,” says Ingleson. This means that more mature and experienced workers need to look at re-skilling and up-skilling opportunities either offered by their organizations as part of internal learning and development programs or simply learning on the job and using the transferable skills they may possess, he adds.

Innovative organizations such as Hitachi Energy and GE Vernova are investing heavily in green skills training as this is where they see their drivers for future growth, and both organizations offer these services to their customers as well, says Ingleson. Meanwhile, the more traditional academic and vocational training is growing at a fast pace with more academic institutions offering courses aligned to sustainability, and many large scale government schemes such as the EU’s Green Skills Initiative (one of several programs under the EU Green Deal) and India’s Green Skill Development Program (run by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change) are up and running to support in the development of green skills.

“Demands aren’t necessarily explicit from clients, unless their core business is 100% aligned to the green economy such as a renewable energy company,” says Ingleson. However, the expectation that candidates have at the very least an appreciation and awareness of the importance of sustainability is becoming increasingly clear.

“As a result, AMS now offers sustainability courses as part of our recruit train and deploy offering, and we are increasingly expected to prove our own sustainability credentials as part of any procurement processes for new business as an increasing percentage of organizations have made significant sustainability-related commitments,” says Ingleson. For example, in 2021 around 60% of FTSE 100 companies were publicly committed to achieving net-zero by 2050, and this number now stands at more than 80%.

According to the Deloitte Economics Institute, an estimated 80% of the skills required to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 already exist in today’s workforce. “This means most current workers are likely to only require upskilling — such as on-the-job training — rather than complete retraining to remain in their current job or to gain a new job due to decarbonization. The skills of workers can facilitate equitable employment opportunities as economies decarbonize,” says Deloitte.

One such AMS client that is achieving some success in its green collar journey is Siemens Energy. The energy giant prides itself on the big steps it has taken to add green collar workers to its ranks of dedicated employees.

“As a global leader in energy technology, we are at the forefront of reducing carbon emissions across the energy landscape, from conventional to renewable power,” says Alain Proietti, Global Head of Talent Acquisition for Siemens Energy. “What this means is that many of our people, require what could be categorised as ‘green’ skills, and a significant proportion of the EUR 80m we invested in continuing education in FY24 was aligned to this purpose — to upskill and re-skill our employees to enable our mission to reduce emissions”.

Siemens Energy is doubling down on green collar jobs. “A large proportion of new hires to Siemens Energy will be expected to bring existing green skills with them, or be excited about the prospect of developing them,” says Proietti.

Reducing carbon emissions and providing energy-efficient products and services is a critical mission for the benefit of everyone on the planet. Thankfully, AMS can help forward-thinking and responsible organizations to fill their ranks with green collar jobs in the years to come.

A green collar upskilling opportunity

For more information, book a consultation with an AMS green collar thought leader today.

written by Phil Albinus in partnership with the Catalyst Editorial Board

with contribution from:

Sailesh Hota

Practice Director
Everest Group

David Ingleson

Sector Managing
Director for Energy, Engineering and Industrials, AMS

Alain Proietti

Global Head of Talent Acquisition
Siemens Energy

Resources

Catalyst

Relevant, engaging, and thought-provoking content from industry leaders related to the world of talent and work.