Learn how the global company solves challenges and drives innovation through apprenticeship, training and a laser focus on skills.
Key Takeaways
- The starting point for Accenture’s skills-first hiring strategy was removing degree requirements from more than half of its U.S. positions.
- Accenture’s apprenticeship program is a powerful support to its skills-first approach, creating an ongoing talent pipeline that accounts for 20% of new entry-level hires in the U.S.
- Accenture talent leaders say every company should build a skills-first strategy to remain competitive. But the change doesn’t need to be drastic. You can start small by shifting your hiring strategy to address a specific goal, such as increasing diversity, recruiting for key skills or retaining top talent.
About 10 years ago, Accenture was growing rapidly and searching for talent that would keep the company on the cutting edge. As a global consulting firm with a workforce of more than 770,000, Accenture’s core offering is its people — their ideas, innovation and expertise. Accenture’s HR and talent management teams realized that traditional hiring strategies were limiting their ability to bring in talent at the scale and speed needed.
“At the time, the vast majority of our entry-level positions required a bachelor’s degree,” says Beca Driscoll, Talent Strategy Executive and North America Apprenticeship Program Director at Accenture. “We were not reaching half of the U.S. workforce.”
We think about skills and potential — not only credentials.
Beca Driscoll, Talent Strategy Executive and Apprenticeship Program Director at Accenture
That was the starting point for Accenture to move to skills-first hiring, a strategy that focuses on job seekers’ specific capabilities and aptitude rather than factors like educational degrees, prior job titles or years of experience. “It’s become clear to us that a person’s educational background is not the only indicator of success,” Driscoll says. “We think about skills and potential — not only credentials.”
By rethinking hiring, Accenture has not only increased diversity in its organization but also kept pace with robust employment needs in a tight labor market: In an 18-month period beginning in 2022, the company hired 200,000 new employees.
A trailblazer in skills-first hiring, Accenture is committed to helping more companies develop their own skills-first strategies. Indeed’s social impact team recently partnered with Accenture on a series of events for employers and senior executives in the private and public sectors. Tamara Fields, U.S. Public Service Industry Lead and Austin Office Managing Director at Accenture, joined leaders from Indeed and other organizations that are dedicated to supporting skills-first hiring to share insight and solutions.
“Accenture is a leader and a pioneer in skills-first hiring. They’re not only thought leaders but innovators in the processes, tools and organizational structures that make a skills-first strategy succeed,” says Parisa Fatehi-Weeks, Indeed’s Senior Director of Global ESG Programs and Partnerships. “At Indeed, we’re proud to partner with Accenture to highlight their practices and help more companies adopt skills-first hiring strategies.”
Here’s how Accenture created a successful skills-first hiring strategy, and how organizations of all kinds can follow its lead to create more effective and equitable hiring practices.
Learn how to stop screening out qualified candidates and screen in more skilled talent by shifting to a skills-first hiring approach.
Drill Down on Skills
A key step in a skills-first hiring strategy is removing unnecessary degree requirements. Today, about half of Accenture’s positions don’t require a four-year degree.
This opens doors to candidates who may otherwise be overlooked for valuable opportunities to kick-start their careers. But to do this effectively, companies must clearly define the necessary skills for a role and be able to identify them in candidates who don’t have traditional experience.
Accenture was already heavily focused on skills and skill development: “We are always on the forefront of technology, so we invest in an enormous amount of training each year to get our people up to speed,” Fields says. Accenture has created a digital library of more than 8,000 skills that apply to employees at every level, in every region. Fields calls it a “single source of truth” that gives everyone at the company a common language for identifying and evaluating specific capabilities.
The standardization of skills enables Accenture to identify whether a degree is necessary for a role and to write job descriptions that accurately reflect the capabilities needed for success. This not only levels the playing field for employees who don’t have degrees, but it also helps Accenture to offer upskilling opportunities as a talent retention strategy and to stay agile as demands change. Every employee has a skills profile that automatically updates when they work on a new project or complete a training course.
The most important skill that Accenture looks for, and hires for, in any employee, regardless of their experience level, is the ability to learn.
Beca Driscoll, Talent Strategy Executive and Apprenticeship Program Director at Accenture
Based on these profiles, Fields says, “We have built proprietary AI to calculate skills and proficiencies, including what we call ‘proximity skills,’ so that we can identify people who might be easily trained to pivot into new work if they have an interest to do something different, or if the work they’re doing is scaling down.”
“The most important skill that Accenture looks for, and hires for, in any employee, regardless of their experience level, is the ability to learn,” Driscoll says.
Change Your Organization’s Mindset
When Accenture removed degree requirements, it faced the challenge of helping people across the organization understand that this change wasn’t about hiring less-skilled workers — it was about removing obstacles to attract a more diverse range of employees. They had to work to shift the organization’s mindset and culture, influencing individual behaviors and attitudes at every level.
They started by educating hiring managers and deploying resources on the ground to set up both managers and new hires for success. Over time, they realized that new hires needed more support, so they added mentorship programs and job shadowing to help them adapt to the culture. These programs, along with employee resource groups (ERGs) and support networks, help new employees make Accenture their own.
Build Your Own Talent Pipeline
Accenture launched its apprenticeship program in 2016, which today forms the foundation of its skills-first hiring strategy.
“Our hypothesis was that, through an apprenticeship model, we would be able to reach high-potential talent that we may not have otherwise,” Driscoll says.
Driscoll knew that apprenticeship models in fields like manufacturing and skilled trades have successfully attracted and retained diverse talent. Accenture’s task was to adapt those frameworks to a corporate setting. Partnerships are critical — Accenture works with certificate programs, community colleges, nonprofits and workforce organizations to bring people into the program.
Developing cohorts is another key element of apprenticeships, which is important for acclimating potential employees to Accenture’s culture, especially when candidates haven’t been exposed to a corporate environment. “You establish a community,” Driscoll says. “It anchors people and creates a greater level of success right out of the door, and that’s what gives you the ability to scale.” Cohorts provide a sense of belonging, which helps drive long-term retention.
Measure Success and Hold Leaders Accountable
The bottom line is the main indicator of success for Accenture. “If I have roles that are sitting empty, I lose revenue,” Fields says. Ready access to talent at scale is essential to the enterprise: Accenture has hired more than 2,500 employees into its apprenticeship program, which accounts for 20% of entry-level hires in North America.
To evaluate the apprenticeship program, Accenture measures completion rates as well as conversion rates for apprenticeship to ongoing employment. The company hires the overwhelming majority of people who complete the program. Accenture holds leaders accountable for these metrics. And they’re not only tracking new hires but also retention, career progression and promotions.
“From an ROI perspective, our goal is to bring folks in, develop them and have them be ongoing parts of our company,” Fields says. “The company evaluates me based on our apprentices’ ability to be successful and stay with Accenture.”
To Get Started With Skills-First Hiring, Start Small
Driscoll and Fields have one main message for companies considering skills-first hiring: start small.
“You don’t have to make a big investment,” Driscoll says. She advises leaders to identify a goal they can address by rethinking hiring, whether that’s expanding talent pools, recruiting for specific skill sets, retaining quality employees or increasing diversity.
If you’re considering removing degree requirements, collaborate with HR to assess the skills needed for specific roles. Keep job descriptions concise, as long descriptions can deter candidates who feel they don’t match every requirement. Focus interviews on relevant behaviors and the candidate’s willingness to learn, and involve a diverse team in the evaluation process to ensure fair and balanced decision-making.
If you’re thinking about establishing an apprenticeship program, start by placing trainees in departments where the work is internal and the frameworks are stable and well established, like HR, finance and IT, Driscoll recommends.
Accenture launched its apprenticeship program with just five trainees working in the company’s internal IT department. “That was a great, safe learning environment because Accenture was the client,” Driscoll says.
Demonstrating success in back-office roles enabled Accenture to expand the program to more central functions. “We knew that to scale the program and make it a sustainable part of our talent strategy, we needed to grow it into where our business was growing, and that is client services,” she says.
Reshaping culture was crucial to the apprenticeship program’s success. In addition to capturing success metrics, Fields says they used personal testimonies, frequently sharing apprentices’ stories at company town halls and meetings. “I cannot tell you how impactful that is,” she says. For example, Driscoll says it has helped shift norms to be more inclusive: “Instead of meeting a colleague and saying, ‘Hi, I’m Beca. I went to this college,’ we introduce ourselves by sharing the work that we focus on and what interests us.”
A Better Future With Skills-First Hiring
Accenture is dedicated to helping other companies develop skills-first hiring strategies because the issues at play affect the economy — and society — as a whole.
“The No. 1 issue we have in this country is reskilling,” Fields says. “We’ve got to solve it because technology is moving fast, and we’re not able to keep up with it in our education system.”
To fill their needs, organizations should look beyond traditional talent pools. And a focus on skill development enables employers to connect with workers who have talent and potential, regardless of where and how they gained their skills, Fields says. “We’ve got to get this talent into play so that we, as a country and as a people, are ready to respond to the reality of our future.”
Skills-First Hiring Resources
Accenture has worked with the Business Roundtable, an association of more than 200 CEOs of leading U.S. companies, to publish a comprehensive playbook, Bridging the Gap Between Talent and Opportunity.
Accenture created a resource guide about the value proposition of apprenticeship programs to help HR professionals talk to C-suite leaders.
Indeed has many products that can help organizations put skills-first hiring principles into practice, including:
- Sponsored Jobs: Post a job highlighting the most important skills for the role and easily review preferred applications.
- Smart Sourcing: Filter candidates by skills to quickly search for those who have the right skills and qualifications you need.
- AI Job Description Generator: Attract the best talent by using the AI job description assistant to highlight the right skills and remove unnecessary requirements.
The U.S. Departments of Labor and Commerce published a Skills-First Hiring Starter Kit, a guide to skills-based hiring, promotion and talent management.
Learn more about skills-first hiring:
A Beginner’s Guide to Skills-First Hiring
AI Has the Power to Unlock Skills-First Hiring
Indeed FutureWorks 2024 Attendees on Ghosting, Skills-First Hiring, AI
Indeed FutureWorks 2024: Trevor Noah on Skills-First Hiring and Politics at Work